Comparative of four neuropsychological scales in early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract:

Objective：To evaluate the diagnostic value of four neuropsychological scales in early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease（AD）. Methods：Totally 109 subjects were divided into three groups：24 in AD group，40 in mild cognitive impairment（MCI） group，45 in normal cognition（NC） group. Four scales were adopted including memory and executive screening（MES），auditory verbal learning test-Huashan version（AVLT-H），mini-mental state examination（MMSE）and Montreal cognitive assessment scale（MoCA）. Scores of the four scales were compared and analyzed. Results：For each scale，there were significant differences among the scores of three groups（P＜0.01）. The scores of short-term and of AVLT-H were not correlated with education level（P ＞0.05）. The sensitivity and specificity of MES were 95.6% and 75.0% respectively using a cut-off score of 80. The sensitivity and specificity reached the highest （100.00% and 99.84%） when taking a cut-off score of 4 in long-term delay recall of AVLT-H. Conclusions：Both MES and AVLT-H are of great value in diagnosing AD at early stage and are not influenced by the education level.