Clinical Manifestations

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Linguistics
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Need for standardized international language screening for neurodegenerative conditions.
• Development of the Mini-Linguistic State Examination (MLSE) network across 22 countries.
• Adaptation and validation of the French/Canadian MLSE (fc-MLSE) in Paris-Québec.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the French/Canadian Mini-Linguistic State Examination (fc-MLSE).
• To assess the fc-MLSE's utility in differentiating healthy controls from patients with Primary Progressive Aphasias (PPA) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).
• To evaluate the fc-MLSE's ability to distinguish between different variants of PPA.

Main Methods:

• Adapted the English MLSE, maintaining similar linguistic complexity across 11 sub-tests.
• Administered the fc-MLSE to 182 healthy controls and 36 PPA patients (nfvPPA, lvPPA, svPPA) and 6 AD patients.
• Generated normative scores for controls and analyzed performance in clinical populations.

Main Results:

• fc-MLSE demonstrated high inter-rater consistency (92%) and was sensitive to age and education in controls.
• The test successfully distinguished between controls, PPA patients, and AD patients.
• fc-MLSE sub-scores identified specific language domain deficits characteristic of nfvPPA, lvPPA, and svPPA variants.

Conclusions:

• The fc-MLSE is a rapid, reliable language assessment tool for clinical use.
• It facilitates accurate classification of PPA subtypes and monitoring of language decline in neurodegenerative diseases.
• International standardization of MLSE versions enhances global consistency in language assessment.