Early interventions may improve mild forgetfulness

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Early interventions can improve everyday memory in patients with mild memory difficulties, investigators in Australia report.

Previous studies have looked at the benefits of memory training in healthy older adults, and positive effects were reported even 5 years after some of the studies ended, Dr. G. J. Kinsella, of La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and colleagues write in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry.

However, researchers were not sure if people with mild memory difficulties would benefit from the training.

Kinsella's team studied 54 men and women with such impairment, most of whom were in their mid-to-late 70s. Half of the people were placed into a memory rehabilitation group, and half onto a waiting list, as a control group.

The rehabilitation group took part in five weekly 90-minute sessions that "used a problem-solving approach to illustrate common everyday memory problems and practice in strategies to respond to these problems," for example using external aids to remember items.

Significant improvements were observed following intervention in everyday memory, although subjects did not sense that their memories were improving. The team also found significant improvements in knowledge and use of memory strategies following intervention.

In addition, knowledge of memory strategies increased among family members after the intervention.

Such rehabilitation "is a low-cost intervention that has been demonstrated in these preliminary findings to offer some moderation of the impact of failing memory in everyday activities," Dr. Kinsella's team concludes.

SOURCE: Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, July 2009.