The hard Test Your Memory. Evaluation of a short cognitive test to detect mild Alzheimer's disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is the evaluation of a novel cognitive test, the hard Test Your Memory (H-TYM), in the detection of mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI).


METHODS
This paper uses a prospective study in an outpatient memory clinic. We recruited 97 patients with a diagnosis of mild AD or aMCI aged between 50 and 80 years. All scored 20 or more on the mini mental state examination (MMSE). We recruited 200 controls from a similar background. The patients were given a novel short cognitive test (H-TYM) designed to test recall of newly learnt visual and verbal material together with the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Assessment Revised, MMSE, and TYM test.


RESULTS
Alzheimer's disease/aMCI patients completed the H-TYM with an average recall score of 6.69 (SD 3.45); control participants scored an average of 20.4 (SD 4.54). The H-TYM detected 95% of cases of mild AD/aMCI on the basis of an optimum cutoff point. The area under the receiver operating characteristic for the H-TYM ratio was calculated to be 0.989 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.980-0.997.


CONCLUSIONS
The H-TYM test has an excellent ability to discriminate between AD/aMCI cases and healthy controls. The H-TYM is a useful tool for the detection of mild AD/aMCI, and it detects AD/aMCI in the majority of patients who "pass" the MMSE and Addenbrooke's Cognitive Assessment Revised.
Department of Neurology, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK.
Jeremy M
JM
Brown
Julie
J
Wiggins
Huan
H
Dong
Rebecca
R
Harvey
Frances
F
Richardson
Kristina
K
Hunter
Kate
K
Dawson
Richard A
RA
Parker
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D000647:Amnesia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010054:Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale / Q000592:standards; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
Alzheimer's; TYM; cognitive; dementia