Picking up certain driving habits as you get older could be an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests.
GPS tracking devices revealed people experiencing cognitive decline start to drive less, particularly at night, and favour well-known routes.
This driving data proved more effective at identifying people who are at risk of cognitive decline than relying on age and memory tests alone, researchers said.
In-vehicle driving data can highlight people who are at risk of cognitive decline and experts say it could be better than relying age and memory tests alone - helping to identify brain changes before any crashes happen.
“Early identification of older drivers who are at risk for accidents is a public health priority, but identifying people who are unsafe is challenging and time-consuming,” said study author Dr Ganesh Babulal, at Washington University School of Medicine.
“We found that using a GPS data tracking device, we could more accurately determine who had developed cognitive issues than looking at just factors such as age, cognitive test scores and whether they had a genetic risk factor related to Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr Ganesh added.
For the study, published in the journal Neurology, 56 people with mild cognitive impairment, which is a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease, and 242 cognitively healthy people with an average age of 75 took thinking skill tests and had a data tracking device installed on their vehicles.
The participants, who all drove at least once a week at the start of the study, were then followed for just over three years.
At the start of the study the participants' driving patterns were similar, but over time older adults with mild cognitive impairment started to drive less each month, mostly took the same routes and didn’t often drive at night.
The average distances of participants' trips, how often they went above the speed limit and how often they varied their routine, helped to predict whether a participant had developed mild cognitive impairment with 82 per cent accuracy.
After adding in factors such as age, demographics, their cognitive test score and whether they had a gene associated with Alzheimer's, the accuracy of predicting cognitive decline improved to 87 per cent.
But when researchers just looked at cognitive tests and Alzheimer’s genes without looking at any driving information, the accuracy was 76 per cent.
“Looking at people’s daily driving behaviour is a relatively low-burden, unobtrusive way to monitor people’s cognitive skills and ability to function,” Dr Babulal said.
“This could help identify drivers who are at risk earlier for early intervention, before they have a crash or near miss, which is often what happens now. Of course, we also need to respect people’s autonomy, privacy and informed decision-making and ensure ethical standards are met.”
