Language impairment in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer disease (AD) is usually associated with cognitive, language and behavioral impairments, which can get more and more serious as the disease progresses. The aim of this study is to verify language disorders in the early stages of this disease. Twelve patients meeting criteria for problable AD were evaluated by the Boston test, and all of them scored more than 23 points on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Data acquired on this language evaluation were compared with the average of normal population data. All patients showed language disorders. Statistical differences were found in visual confrontating naming and auditory comphrension tasks. The patients performed well in writing and reading tasks. We believe that there might have had an interference in the patient's linguistic task performance due to their memory impairment. We could find language impairments in the early stages of AD.