Detecting cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia with the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination

To assess the feasibility of the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III (ACE) in detecting cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia and to examine the profile of cognitive impairments.

There were 32 participants with schizophrenia and 32 normal controls were carried out at Thammasat University Hospital, Thailand. They were matched 1:1 using comparable age and educational level. All participants completed the ACE.

Schizophrenia patients had lower mean totals in their ACE scores than normal controls [82.9(8.4) vs 89.6(6.1), p < 0.001]. Analysis of the individual cognitive subdomains demonstrated that patients performed significantly worse than normal controls on three subdomains: attention (p 0.007), memory (p 0.003) and verbal fluency (p 0.018). There were no statistically significant differences in the language (p 0.223) and visuospatial ability domains (p 0.055).

The ACE can detect the cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia. They had a lower cognitive function compared to the normal controls.