title: Early detection of Alzheimer's disease with a total score of the German CERAD.
abstract: The goal of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic discriminability of three different global scores for the German version of the Consortium to Establish a Registry on Alzheimer's Disease-Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (CERAD-NAB). The CERAD-NAB was administered to 1100 healthy control participants [NC; Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) mean = 28.9] and 352 patients with very mild Alzheimer's disease (AD; MMSE mean = 26.1) at baseline and subsets of participants at follow-up an average of 2.4 (NC) and 1.2 (AD) years later. We calculated the following global scores: Chandler et al.'s (2005) score (summed raw scores), logistic regression on principal components analysis scores (PCA-LR), and logistic regression on demographically corrected CERAD-NAB variables (LR). Correct classification rates (CCR) were compared with areas under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUC). The CCR of the LR score (AUC = .976) exceeded that of the PCA-LR, while the PCA-LR (AUC = .968) and Chandler (AUC = .968) scores performed comparably. Retest data improved the CCR of the PCA-LR and Chandler (trend) scores. Thus, for the German CERAD-NAB, Chandler et al.'s total score provided an effective global measure of cognitive functioning, whereby the inclusion of retest data tended to improve correct classification of individual cases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geriatrics, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland. ehrenspergerm@uhbs.ch
authors.forename: Michael M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Ehrensperger
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berres
authors.forename: Kirsten I
authors.initials: KI
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Andreas U
authors.initials: AU
authors.lastname: Monsch
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D019540:Area Under Curve; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D018450:Disease Progression; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results