“Combination therapy should be considered the standard treatment in patients with Alzheimers disease”.

-the 17TH course national Alzheimer’s disease ended Saturday in Cádiz after three intense days of work with important conclusions for the medical community regarding the diagnosis and treatment of this pathology, both pharmacological and cognitive stimulation through

– in addition, 200 experts registered in the course has expanded its training through participation in workshops, notably the one dedicated to the neuropsychological scales in the dementia consultation

Cadiz, February of 2012- the 17TH Edition of the national course of Alzheimer’s disease, which was held in the Palace of congresses of Cádiz on Thursday and has been organised by the Fundación Grünenthal in conjunction with the conduct group of the study of Neurology and dementia from the Spanish Neurology Society (SEN), has been completed with important conclusions for the medical community (specialists in neurology, geriatrics, psychiatry, primary care physicians)(, etc.), both with regard to diagnosis and treatment of this pathology.

at the present time, there are two types of drugs available for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase (Donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine) and memantine ”, explained in one of the round tables Dr. Adrián Ares Luque, complex healthcare University of León, who added that all of them have proved their effectiveness in the control of cognitive disorders, behavioral and functional that characterizes the disease ”.

In this line, according to the neurologist combination therapy (with an inhibitor of cholinesterase and memantine Association) has shown a symptomatic improvement in cognitive aspects, behavioral and functional and scales of overall evaluation in clinical trials to 6 months, above that obtained with inhibitors of cholinesterase in monotherapy treatment ”.

Several open studies have shown, moreover, that combination therapy maintains its effectiveness of a prologue time. Slow cognitive and functional deterioration of significant and sustained way (after a two-year follow-up and a half), and prevents the appearance of behavioral alterations, delaying the need for institutionalization (after a follow-up of more than five years). Therefore, the combination of an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase and memantine should be considered the standard treatment in patients with Alzheimer’s disease ”, concluded Dr. Ares Luque.

Formation workshops

On the other hand, it should be noted that during the scientific quotation 200 registered experts have participated in training workshops, notably the taught by Dr. Cristóbal Carnero of the Hospital Virgen de las Nieves of Granada: scales neuropsychological dementia consultation ”.

In this workshop, according to the specialist, has become a staging a day about the new instruments and scales that have been developed in recent years and which are intended to facilitate the detection, evaluation and follow-up of patients with cognitive impairment or dementia in the consultations.

We have placed particular emphasis on two of them, on the one hand the Fototest (a short test which facilitates the detection and diagnosis of people consulting by complaints of memory, a reason for consultation every day more frequent, in fact 1 of every 3-4 consultations in Neurology is why) ”, explained Dr. Carnero, who noted that the Fototest just needed three minutes and improves performance, both in cost and useful diagnostic tests that were used so far for this purpose ”.

The other instrument that has focused the attention of the workshop has been the level rose, a newly developed questionnaire and which aims to streamline and facilitate the follow-up of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, global and integral way to value their cognitive, functional status, behavioural and their quality of life as well as caregiver overload.

The Conference concluded Saturday with a rapid course of markers for the diagnosis of the disease, whose goal was the identification of markers that may be available in current and future clinical practice, and to allow the implementation of new diagnostic criteria for as welldiagnose the disease without the occurrence of dementia.