Global staging measures for dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) assess the influence of cognitive loss on the ability to conduct everyday activities and represent the “ultimate test” of efficacy for antidementia drug trials. They provide information about clinically meaningful function and behavior and are less affected by the “floor” and “ceiling” effects commonly associated with psychometric test. The Washington University Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) is a global scale developed to clinically denote the presence of DAT and stage its severity. The clinical protocol incorporates semistructured interviews with the patient and informant to obtain information necessary to rate the subject's cognitive performance in six domains: memory, orientation, judgment and problem solving, community affairs, home and hobbies, and personal care. The CDR has been standardized for multicenter use, including the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) and the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study, and interrater reliability has been established. Criterion validity for both the global CDR and scores on individual domains has been demonstrated, and the CDR also has been validated neuropathologically, particularly for the presence or absence of dementia. Standardized training protocols are available. Although not well suited as a brief screening tool for population surveys of dementia because the protocol depends on sufficient time to conduct interviews, the CDR has become widely accepted in the clinical setting as a reliable and valid global assessment measure for DAT.

The Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) has a score range of 0 to 100 and provides quantitative assessment on attention, concentration, orientation, short-term memory, long-term memory, language abilities, visual construction, list-generating fluency, abstraction, and judgment. Scores of the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Modified Mini-Mental State Test, and the Hasegawa Dementia Screening Scale can also be estimated from subsets of the CASI items. Pilot testing conducted in Japan and in the United States has demonstrated its cross-cultural applicability and its usefulness in screening for dementia, in monitoring disease progression, and in providing profiles of cognitive impairment. Typical administration time is 15 to 20 minutes. Record form, manual, videotape of test administration, and quizzes to qualify potential users on the administration and scoring of the CASI are available upon request.

Background: The Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) flagship study of aging aimed to recruit 1000 individuals aged over 60 to assist with prospective research into Alzheimer's disease (AD). This paper describes the recruitment of the cohort and gives information about the study methodology, baseline demography, diagnoses, medical comorbidities, medication use, and cognitive function of the participants.

Methods: Volunteers underwent a screening interview, had comprehensive cognitive testing, gave 80 ml of blood, and completed health and lifestyle questionnaires. One quarter of the sample also underwent amyloid PET brain imaging with Pittsburgh compound B (PiB PET) and MRI brain imaging, and a subgroup of 10% had ActiGraph activity monitoring and body composition scanning.

Results: A total of 1166 volunteers were recruited, 54 of whom were excluded from further study due to comorbid disorders which could affect cognition or because of withdrawal of consent. Participants with AD (211) had neuropsychological profiles which were consistent with AD, and were more impaired than participants with mild cognitive impairment (133) or healthy controls (768), who performed within expected norms for age on neuropsychological testing. PiB PET scans were performed on 287 participants, 100 had DEXA scans and 91 participated in ActiGraph monitoring.

Conclusion: The participants comprising the AIBL cohort represent a group of highly motivated and well-characterized individuals who represent a unique resource for the study of AD. They will be reassessed at 18-month intervals in order to determine the predictive utility of various biomarkers, cognitive parameters and lifestyle factors as indicators of AD, and as predictors of future cognitive decline.

Background: Anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent among elderly people, although infrequently the subject of systematic research in this age group. One important limitation is the lack of a widely accepted instrument to measure dimensional anxiety in both normal old people and old people with mental health problems seen in various settings. Accordingly, we developed and tested of a short scale to measure anxiety in older people.

Methods: We generated a large number of potential items de novo and by reference to existing anxiety scales, and then reduced the number of items to 60 through consultation with a reference group consisting of psychologists, psychiatrists and normal elderly people. We then tested the psychometric properties of these 60 items in 452 normal old people and 46 patients attending a psychogeriatric service. We were able to reduce the number of items to 20. We chose a 1-week perspective and a dichotomous response scale.

Results: Cronbach's α for the 20-item Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) was 0.91 among normal elderly people and 0.93 in the psychogeriatric sample. Concurrent validity with a variety of other measures was demonstrated in both the normal sample and the psychogeriatric sample. Inter-rater and test–retest reliability were found to be excellent. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated a cut-point of 10/11 for the detection of DSM-IV Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in the psychogeriatric sample, with 83% of patients correctly classified with a specificity of 84% and a sensitivity of 75%.

Conclusions: The GAI is a new 20-item self-report or nurse-administered scale that measures dimensional anxiety in elderly people. It has sound psychometric properties. Initial clinical testing indicates that it is able to discriminate between those with and without any anxiety disorder and between those with and without DSM-IV GAD.

Background: In recent years, many different forms of interventions for caregivers of people with dementia have been developed. However, their results have been, in part, inconclusive.

Methods: Meta-analysis was used to integrate the results of 127 intervention studies with dementia caregivers published or presented between 1982 and 2005.

Results: Interventions had, on average, significant but small effects on burden, depression, subjective well-being, ability/knowledge and symptoms of care recipient. Only multicomponent interventions reduced the risk for institu-tionalization. Psychoeducational interventions that require active participation of caregivers had the broadest effects. Effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy, support, counseling, daycare, training of care recipient, and multicomponent interventions were domain specific. The effect sizes varied by study chara-cteristics, such as caregiver gender and year of publication.

Conclusions: Because most interventions have domain-specific outcomes, clinicians must tailor interventions according to the specific needs of the individual caregivers. Although more recent interventions showed stronger effects, there is room for further improvements in interventions.

In recent years, patients who are at high risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) have become a focus of study. Several research groups have identified these patients, developed diagnostic criteria, and followed the patients longitudinally. These patients therefore constitute a clinical entity that is suitable for therapeutic interventions. In this article, we report our 5-year experience at the Mayo Clinic in characterizing a group of patients with mild cognitive impairment. These subjects were recruited from community-dwelling individuals who were receiving general medical care in the Department of Internal Medicine. They received the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment if they met the following criteria: (a) complaint of defective memory, (b) normal activities of daily living, (c) normal general cognitive function, (d) abnormal memory function for age, and (e) absence of dementia. In following more than 75 of these patients, some of whom have been studied for as long as 5 years, it appears that approximately 10% to 15% of the subjects evolve to AD each year. We therefore evaluated the cognitive profiles of these patients at the time of their initial diagnosis in an attempt to predict who would remain stable and who would evolve to AD. Certain features of learning and memory performance indicated patients who were more likely to progress, but the strongest predictor was their apolipoprotein E status. The patients who possessed an ε4 allele were more likely to convert to AD at a more rapid rate then those who were not carriers. Our results and similar data from other study groups indicate that diagnostic criteria can be defined for patients who are likely to convert to AD; the natural history of these patients is becoming apparent, and variables that predict ultimate conversion can be defined. Consequently, patients with mild cognitive impairment constitute an important group for study, particularly from the aspect of therapeutic interventions.

Background and aims: The IQCODE is widely used as a screening test for dementia, particularly where the subject is unable to undergo direct cognitive testing or for screening in populations with low levels of education and literacy. This review draws together research on the psychometric properties and validity of the IQCODE.

Method: A systematic search of the literature was carried out using three databases.

Results: The review shows that the questionnaire has high reliability and measures a single general factor of cognitive decline. It validly reflects past cognitive decline, performs at least as well at screening as conventional cognitive screening tests, predicts incident dementia, and correlates with a wide range of cognitive tests. A particular strength is that the IQCODE is relatively unaffected by education and pre-morbid ability or by proficiency in the culture's dominant language. The disadvantage of the IQCODE is that it is affected by informant characteristics such as depression and anxiety in the informant and the quality of the relationship between the informant and the subject.

Conclusions: Because the IQCODE provides information complementary to brief cognitive tests, harnessing them together can improve screening accuracy.

This study examines the psychometric properties of two new abbreviated versions of standard measures of depression, a revised eight-item Center for Epidemiological Studies--Depression Scale (CES-D) and a short-form Composite International Diagnostic Interview (short-form CIDI). A sample of 6,133 elders, age 70 years or older, completed both measures as part of the Asset and Health Dynamics Study of the Oldest Old. The revised CES-D had an internal consistency and factor structure comparable to that of prior versions of the CES-D. The sources of discordance between the two measures were examined and the two measures were compared on self-report of four clinical variables: medical illness, physician diagnosis, psychiatric treatment, and antidepressant or tranquilizer use. Both measures were associated with self-report of physician diagnosis and psychiatric treatment. Respondents positive for depression on the CES-D reported higher rates of antidepressant use. Respondents positive on the short-form CIDI only did not report more antidepressant use than nondepressed respondents.

Background: The population of older adults in long-term care (LTC) is expected to increase considerably in the near future. An understanding of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in LTC will help in planning mental health services for this population. This study reviews the prevalence of common psychiatric disorders in LTC populations.

Methods: We searched electronic databases for studies on the prevalence of major psychiatric disorders in LTC using medical subject headings and key words. We only included studies using validated measures for diagnosing psychiatric disorders or psychiatric symptoms. Our review focused on the following psychiatric disorders: dementia, behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), major depression, depressive symptoms, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and alcohol use disorders. We also determined the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the U.S. LTC population using data from the 2004 National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS).

Results: A total of 74 studies examining the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and psychological symptoms in LTC populations were identified including 30 studies on the prevalence of dementia, 9 studies on behavioral symptoms in dementia, and 26 studies on depression. Most studies involved few LTC facilities and were conducted in developed countries. Dementia had a median prevalence (58%) in studies while the prevalence of BPSD was 78% among individuals with dementia. The median prevalence of major depressive disorder was 10% while the median prevalence of depressive symptoms was 29% among LTC residents. There were few studies on other psychiatric disorders. Results from the 2004 NNHS were consistent with those in the published literature.

Conclusions: Dementia, depression and anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders among older adults in LTC. Many psychiatric disorders appear to be more prevalent in LTC settings when compared to those observed in community-dwelling older adults. Policy-makers and clinicians should be aware of the common psychiatric disorders in LTC and further research into effective prevention and treatments are required for this growing population.

In 1962, based on a study of nursing home residents, Kral suggested a distinction between benign and malignant senescent forgetfulness, the latter evolving to dementia and early death and the former remaining relatively static. Although this concept was never operationally described or validated, it clearly rang true with those working with the nascent specialty of geriatric psychiatry and rapidly entered standard textbooks on the subject. The burgeoning of interest in the elderly and the massive expansion of clinical and research work in the field of dementia in the eighties led to a widely expressed need for the development of criteria to categorize a group of subjects with memory problems falling short of dementia. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) responded with the formation of a working group that published its suggested criteria for what Crook et al. (1986) called “age-associated memory impairment” (AAMI). Although some of the detailed components of these criteria have proved controversial, the term has been increasingly quoted in relevant literature and has given rise to specific studies. It has led to wide discussion, and related entities have been incorporated both in the draft of DSM-IV (as “aging-associated cognitive decline [AACD]” [American Psychiatric Association, 1993], an “additional condition that may be the focus of clinical attention”) and in the research criteria for ICD-10 (World Health Organization, 1993), where it is potentially classifiable under FO6.7 Mild Cognitive Disorder, although this does not specifically give aging as a cause. In arriving at our provisional criteria we have drawn to a great degree on these and other related publications that we are pleased to acknowledge.

Evaluation of changes in functional performance and activities of daily living skills is an essential aspect of the assessment of elderly individuals with chronic illness. Although functional decrement is a central aspect of Alzheimer's disease (AD), many measures currently utilized to assess these changes have limitations. Empirical and systematic examination of the functional changes occurring in patients with AD has resulted in the development of an assessment measure termed Functional Assessment Staging (FAST) that allows for the specific evaluation of these changes throughout the entire course of AD. In this paper the results of three separate investigations regarding the reliability, validity, and progressive ordinality of FAST are described. The results indicate that FAST is a reliable and valid assessment technique for evaluating functional deterioration in AD patients throughout the entire course of the illness. Moreover, the results suggest that the FAST elucidates a characteristic pattern of progressive, ordinal, and functional decline in AD. Because the elements of functional capacity incorporated in FAST are relatively universal and readily ascertainable, as well as characteristic of the course of AD, FAST can serve as a strong diagnostic and differential diagnostic aid for clinicians. The sensitivity of FAST to the entire course of AD, even in its most severe stages, may be indicative of the potential value of this instrument for further investigation of the temporal longitudinal course of AD, and of the relationships between clinical pathology and neuropathology throughout the entire longitudinal course of AD.

Objectives: Older people commonly present with memory loss although on assessment are not found to have a full dementia complex. Previous studies have suggested however that people with subjective and objective cognitive loss are at higher risk of dementia. We aimed to determine from the literature the rate of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to dementia.

Methods: Systematic review of MedLine, PsychLit and EmBase.

Results: We identified 19 longitudinal studies published between 1991 and 2001 that addressed conversion of mild cognitive impairment to dementia. Overall the rate of conversion was 10% but with large differences between studies. The single biggest variable accounting for between study heterogeneity was source of subjects, with self-selected clinic attenders having the highest conversion rate. The most important factor accounting for heterogeneity within studies was cognitive testing, with poor performance predicting conversion with a high degree of accuracy.

Conclusions: These data strongly support the notion that subjective and objective evidence of cognitive decline is not normal and predicts conversion to dementia. The more stringent the measures of both variables the better the prediction of conversion. Mild cognitive impairment, appropriately diagnosed, is a good measure with which to select subjects for disease modification studies.

The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a widely used screening test for cognitive impairment in older adults. Because the guidelines for its application are brief, the administration and scoring of the test can vary between different individuals. This can diminish its reliability. Furthermore, some of the items must be changed to accommodate different settings, such as the clinic, home, or hospital. Because there are no time limits, it is not clear how long one should wait for a reply to a question. It is also not clear how one deals with answers that are “near misses.” The goal of the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination (SMMSE) was to impose strict guidelines for administration and scoring to improve the reliability of the instrument. The reliability of the MMSE was compared with the reliability of the SMMSE in 48 older adults who had the tests administered by university students on three different occasions to assess the interrater and intrarater reliability of the tests. The SMMSE had significantly better interrater and intrarater reliability compared with the MMSE: The interrater variance was reduced by 76% and the intrarater variance was reduced by 86%. It took less time to administer the SMMSE compared with the MMSE (average 10.5 minutes and 13.4 minutes, respectively). The intraclass correlation for the MMSE was .69, and .9 for the SMMSE. Administering and scoring the SMMSE on a task-by-task basis are discussed.

Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) predominates in the healthy brain, with butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) considered to play a minor role in regulating brain acetylcholine (ACh) levels. However, BuChE activity progressively increases in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), while AChE activity remains unchanged or declines. Both enzymes therefore represent legitimate therapeutic targets for ameliorating the cholinergic deficit considered to be responsible for the declines in cognitive, behavioral and global functioning characteristic of AD. The two enzymes differ in substrate specificity, kinetics and activity in different brain regions. Experimental evidence from the use of agents with enhanced selectivity for BuChE (cymserine analogues, MF-8622) and the dual inhibitor of both AChE and BuChE, rivastigmine, indicates potential therapeutic benefits of inhibiting both AChE and BuChE in AD and related dementias. Recent evidence suggests that both AChE and BuChE may have roles in the aetiology and progression of AD beyond regulation of synaptic ACh levels. The development of specific BuChE inhibitors and further experience with the dual enzyme inhibitor rivastigmine will improve understanding of the aetiology of AD and should lead to a wider variety of potent treatment options.