Addenbrooke's cognitive examination III: diagnostic utility for mild cognitive impairment and dementia and correlation with standardized neuropsychological tests.
Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) is a screening test that was recently validated for diagnosing dementia. Since it assesses attention, language, memory, fluency, and visuospatial function separately, it may also be useful for general neuropsychological assessments. The aim of this study was to analyze the tool's ability to detect early stages of Alzheimer's disease and to examine the correlation between ACE-III scores and scores on standardized neuropsychological tests.



Our study included 200 participants categorized as follows: 25 healthy controls, 48 individuals with subjective memory complaints, 47 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and 47 mild Alzheimer's disease, and 33 patients with other neurodegenerative diseases.



The ACE-III memory and language domains were highly correlated with the neuropsychological tests specific to those domains (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.806 for total delayed recall on the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test vs. 0.744 on the Boston Naming Test). ACE-III scores discriminated between controls and patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (AUC: 0.906), and between controls and patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AUC: 0.978).



Our results suggest that ACE-III is a useful neuropsychological test for assessing the cognitive domains of attention, language, memory, and visuospatial function. It also enables detection of Alzheimer's disease in early stages.
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Jordi A
JA
Matias-Guiu
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Ana
A
Cortés-Martínez
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Maria
M
Valles-Salgado
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Teresa
T
Rognoni
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Marta
M
Fernández-Matarrubia
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Teresa
T
Moreno-Ramos
Department of Neurology,Hospital Clínico San Carlos,San Carlos Institute for Health Research (IdISSC),Universidad Complutense de Madrid,Madrid,Spain.
Jorge
J
Matías-Guiu
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
Addenbrooke's cognitive examination; Alzheimer's disease; cognitive screening; dementia; neuropsychological assessment