Mayo Clinic Tool Estimates MCI and Dementia Risk Years Before Symptoms

Drawing on decades of community follow-up, the model prioritizes amyloid PET with APOE status to inform earlier intervention pending clinical validation.

Overview

Published in The Lancet Neurology, the calculator provides personalized 10‑year and lifetime probabilities of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia.
It integrates age, sex, APOE genotype and brain amyloid measured by PET, with amyloid burden showing the largest impact on lifetime risk.
The analysis found higher lifetime risk for women and for people who carry the APOE ε4 genetic variant.
Developed from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging cohort of 5,858 participants, the work leveraged near‑complete follow‑up via medical records and identified higher dementia incidence among study dropouts.
The tool is currently for research use, with plans for validation and potential incorporation of blood-based biomarkers as amyloid‑removing drugs for MCI and mild dementia increase the value of early risk stratification.