Introduction: Patients with mild to moderate dementia, progress to end stage dementia faster if they have more medical conditions (MCs) at their baseline evaluation, than those who have less MCs. Other recent studies have noted that the cognitive function of elderly people with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) is five times more likely to further decline than those without SCI.

Objectives: Our aim was to determine; 1) whether the prevalence of medical comorbidities contribute to more rapid decline in cognitive functioning, and 2) whether the prevalence of medical conditions and the use of medications are different in patients with and without SCI.

Methods: Using rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, we enrolled 86 elderly people with normal cognition in a retrospective cross-sectional study.

Results: Our preliminary evaluation shows that medical conditions markedly influence the decline of cognitive functioning, even in the elderly with normal baseline cognitive function, and in the elderly with SCI have significantly more MCs and take more medications than those without SCI.

Conclusions: Further studies are needed to evaluate the change in the number of medications, frequency of cardiovascular diseases, history of surgeries and episodes or occurrences of depression between the evaluations.