Differentiating Alzheimer's disease from subcortical vascular dementia with the FAB test.
BACKGROUND
The frontal assessment battery (FAB) test is a composite tool for assessing executive functions related to the frontal lobe. Neuropsychological and blood-flow studies indicate distinct patterns of deterioration of anterior and posterior cortical function in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and subcortical vascular dementia (VD) patients. We predict that the FAB score may be useful for discriminating VD from AD.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the clinical usefulness of the FAB test for differential diagnosis of AD and VD.


METHODS
We compared FAB scores in 25 patients with AD, 27 patients with VD, and 80 age-matched normal control subjects. The AD group was matched for age, education and MMSE score with the VD group. The subtest scores in FAB were also compared among the three groups.


RESULTS
The FAB scores were significantly decreased in both the AD and VD groups compared to the control group, and the reduction were greater in the VD group. Among the FAB subtests, mental flexibility (phonological verbal fluency) was the only subtest that significantly discriminated VD from the other two groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The FAB test can provide useful information for differentiating AD and VD at the bedside.
Oguro
Hiroaki
H
Dept of Neurology, Hematology & Rheumatology, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, Izumo, Japan. oguro@med.shimane-u.ac.jp
Yamaguchi
Shuhei
S
Abe
Satoshi
S
Ishida
Yuri
Y
Bokura
Hirokazu
H
Kobayashi
Shotai
S
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity