Cued recall in early-stage dementia in adults with Down's syndrome.
BACKGROUND
Memory declines were evaluated with an adaptation of the Cued Recall Test (CRT) in 19 adults with Down's syndrome (DS) with mild or moderate intellectual disability (ID) who were at an early-stage of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), and their performance was compared to peer groups of 75 adults with DS and 66 adults with ID without DS who were not suspected of functional declines.


METHODS
The CRT consisted of a training period in which 12 items were presented, four at a time, with each item accompanied by a unique category cue. The testing phase consisted of three trials which generated two measures, a free recall score (FRS; spontaneous recall of the list of 12 items) and a total score (TS; FRS plus items recalled when the category cue was provided).


RESULTS
It was found that a cut-off value of < or = 23 on the TS resulted in a sensitivity of 94.7% and a specificity of 93.9% with a positive predictive value of 81.9% when those individuals with DAT were compared to the participants with ID without DS. Eight of these individuals with DAT had relatively poor performance on the CRT compared to their healthy peers at a baseline when they were not suspected of functional declines, suggesting that memory declines can occur several years prior to the identification of DAT. In addition, 17 participants with DS without a diagnosis of DAT met the criterion for the cut-off score. Longitudinal data and converging measures indicated that there was the possibility that 15 of these individuals are in a 'pre-clinical' stage of decline.


CONCLUSIONS
The usefulness of the CRT as a screening test for early memory deficits for this population needs to be confirmed by following these participants for an extended period of time and by studying an independent sample.
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D003463:Cues; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000150:complications*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index