WORDS: A New Verbal Memory Test to Evaluate Cognitive Health in a Zambian School-aged Population.

Objective: The paucity of psychometric instruments is one of the challenges preventing the effective implementation of child cognitive health testing in Sub-Saharan countries. WORDS is a new memory assessment tool originally validated in a Zambian school-aged population.

Design: WORDS involves the standardized administration of a multitrial, verbal, free recall task with acquisition and immediate recall of a structured list of 16 words, followed by a second acquisition and delayed recall after a five-minute interference.

WAVES: A Novel Test to Evaluate Visuospatial Construction Ability in a School-aged Population.

Objective: The paucity of valid diagnostic tools is one of the challenges preventing the effective implementation of child cognitive health testing in Sub-Saharan developing countries. WAVES addresses the need for new psychometric tests to evaluate visuospatial construction ability in a school-aged population. WAVES involves the standardized administration of a copy design task that is sequentially repeated by four distinct reproduction modalities: copy design with open eyes (CDO), immediate reproduction from memory with open eyes (IRMO), immediate reproduction from memory with closed eyes (IRMC), and delayed reproduction from memory with closed eyes (DRMC).

Development of a Symbol Cancellation Test to Evaluate Attention in a School-aged Zambian Population.

Objective: The assessment of child cognitive health in Sub-Saharan developing countries poses significant challenges, including the paucity of valid diagnostic tools. We report the development and the initial validation of the Zambia Symbol Cancellation Test (ZSCT), a psychometric test to evaluate selective attention in a pediatric, school-aged population.

Design: ZSCT reliability and validity were assessed in a field trial.

Development of a Cognitive Ability Assessment Tool for a Pediatric School-aged Population.

Objective: The assessment of a child's cognitive health in developing countries poses significant challenges, including the paucity of valid diagnostic tools. We report the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new eight-item cognitive ability assessment tool (CAAT-8) for use in an African Sub-Saharan school-aged population.

Design: CAAT-8 reliability and validity were assessed in a field trial.

Assessment of Cognitive and Neurologic Recovery in Ischemic Stroke Drug Trials: Results from a Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study.

Ischemic stroke is a serious medical condition with limited therapeutic options. The evaluation of the therapeutic potential of novel pharmacological interventions is carried-out in Phase II trials. The study design, primarily intended to evaluate efficacy and safety, is a balance between utilizing as few patients as possible to minimize safety risk and enrolling sufficient patients to detect unambiguous efficacy signals.

Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitor PF-03049423 Effect on Stroke Recovery: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: The therapeutic potential of phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor PF-03049423 was evaluated in a phase 2, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of subjects with acute ischemic stroke (

Clinical Trial Registration Information: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, unique identifier: NCT01208233; http://www.

Differential characteristics of the aging process and the vascular cognitive impairment in the organization of memory retrieval.

Early identification of cognitive impairment in patients with chronic cerebral vascular disorders can allow for evaluating the time course of the disease up to the phase of conversion to dementia. The specific indicators of pathological cognitive decline should be identifiable vs. the concurrent age-associated changes in memory which accompany the aging process.