Early diagnosis of dementia is critical to delaying the onset of cognitive decline. Now, a new study published in the journal Neurology suggests that a simple test of walking speed and memory could provide just that.

Approximately 5.2 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease – the most common form of dementia. It is estimated that this number will triple to almost 16 million by the year 2050, emphasizing the need for strategies that could slow, halt or prevent the disease.

Share on Pinterest Researchers say that a slow walking speed and memory complaints could be an early sign of dementia .

Current methods used to diagnose dementia involve a variety of assessments, including physical examinations, memory tests and brain scans.

But in this latest study, the research team – led by investigators at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center in New York, NY – reveals a potential new test that could diagnose pre-dementia.

“As a young researcher, I examined hundreds of patients and noticed that if an older person was walking slowly, there was a good chance that his cognitive tests were also abnormal,” says senior study author Dr. Joe Verghese, a professor in the Saul. R. Korey Department of Neurology and the Department of Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

“This gave me the idea that perhaps we could use this simple clinical sign – how fast someone walks – to predict who would develop dementia.”

Dr. Verghese says that in a 2002 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues revealed how abnormal walking gait (the pattern of walking) could accurately predict the later development of dementia.

The team built on this finding in their latest research, developing a test that uses gait speed and cognitive complaints to diagnose motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR), which the researchers believe is an early sign of dementia.