A Brief Dementia Test with Subjective and Objective Measures.

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Neurology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Early identification of dementia is crucial for timely intervention.
• Developing effective brief screening tools for dementia is a significant clinical need.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of a brief cognitive test for dementia.
• To assess the utility of combining the informant-rated AD8 questionnaire with the objective Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) or its components.

Main Methods:

• Compared diagnostic performance of AD8, MMSE, and AD8+MMSE using receiver operating characteristic analysis.
• Included mild dementia patients (CDR ≤1) and cognitively intact controls.
• Used stepwise logistic regression to identify optimal MMSE subcomponents for combination with AD8.

Main Results:

• The AD8 demonstrated superior discrimination (AUC=0.92) compared to MMSE (AUC=0.87).
• Combining AD8 with MMSE (AD8+MMSE) further improved discrimination (AUC=0.95).
• AD8 combined with three-item recall and intersecting pentagon copy achieved comparable diagnostic accuracy (AUC=0.95) to AD8+full MMSE.

Conclusions:

• The combination of AD8 with specific MMSE subcomponents (three-item recall, intersecting pentagon copy) offers excellent diagnostic utility.
• This combined brief cognitive test is a promising tool for the early detection of dementia.