This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Eugene H. Rubin, MD, PhD; Martha Storandt, PhD; J. Philip Miller; Elizabeth A. Grant, PhD; Dorothy A. Kinscherf; John C. Morris, MD; Leonard Berg, MD

Arch Neurol. 1993;50(4):380-383.

Abstract
• Objective.
—The influence of age on performance on clinical and psychometric assessments is examined in groups of nondemented persons and individuals with either very mild or mild dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT).

Design.
—Initial clinical and psychometric assessments of persons enrolled in longitudinal studies of DAT and nondemented control subjects.

Setting.
—Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University, St Louis, Mo.

Participants.
—Volunteer samples of 108 people (44 men, 64 women) with mild DAT, 61 people (30 men, 31 women) with very mild DAT, and 122 healthy nondemented people (45 men, 77 women) were recruited between 1979 and 1991. Age ranged from 54 to 87 years. Persons with confounding medical, neurologic, or psychiatric disorders were excluded. Dementia severity was staged using the Clinical Dementia Rating scale.

Main Outcome Measures.
—Five brief quantitative clinical tests included in the 90-minute clinician administered protocol, as well as 14 tests included in a 2-hour psychometric test battery.

Results.
—Dementia severity affected performance on all measurements. Age did not influence performance on clinical assessments. There was a significant interaction between age and dementia severity on 10 of 14 psychometric measures. In general, older nondemented individuals performed less well than younger nondemented individuals while older mildly demented persons performed about the same as, or slightly better than, their younger counterparts.

Conclusions.
—Age does not affect performance on brief clinical assessment instruments. However, age affects psychometric performance differently in cognitively intact persons when compared with persons with DAT. As a result, psychometric differentiation between cognitively normal and demented individuals is more difficult in older populations.

Author Affiliations
From the Departments of Psychiatry (Dr Rubin and Ms Kinscherf), Psychology (Dr Storandt), Pathology (Dr Morris), and Neurology and Neurosurgery (Drs Storandt, Morris, and Berg), Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and the Division of Biostatistics (Mr Miller and Dr Grant), Washington University, St Louis, Mo.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication November 16, 1992.

Reprint requests to the Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, 4940 Children's Place, St Louis, MO 63110 (Dr Rubin).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Rate of Cognitive Decline in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease: The Role of Comorbidity
Backman et al.
Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Science 2003;58:P228-236.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neuropsychological prediction of conversion to dementia from questionable dementia: statistically significant but not yet clinically useful
Tian et al.
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2003;74:433-438.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Clinical Validity of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale in Detecting Dementia of the Alzheimer Type: A Double Cross-Validation and Application to a Community-Dwelling Sample
Monsch et al.
Arch Neurol 1995;52:899-904.
ABSTRACT