Minor neurological weaknesses may offer doctors an opportunity to see which older patients are at higher risk of illness, like strokes, and death and begin treatment, researchers have found.
Though the patients may not sense anything is wrong, doctors can spot the changes with little trouble, says the study, in the June 23 Archives of Internal Medicine.
“It is something very simple, a low-tech clinical exam that every physician studies at the medical school,” the lead author of the study, Dr. Marco Inzitari of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said in an e-mail message. Dr. Inzitari did the research at the University of Florence.
Among other signs, the tests look at reflexes, differences in shoulder strength and sensitivity to touch.
In all, the researchers used 15 measures and then combined them into a single score.
The study examined about 500 volunteers with an average age of just under 73 and no known neurological problems. Then it followed them for an eight-year period.
The researchers found that the higher the score at the start of the study, the greater the likelihood that the volunteers would develop cognitive and functional problems over the course of the study.
They were also more likely to die sooner.
An editorial accompanying the study said that based on its findings and other studies, a 65-year-old American who appears generally healthy and has a score of less than 3 would have an active life expectancy of 14 years. A score of 3 would reduce that to about 7 years.