Assessing subjective cognitive decline in older adults attending primary health care centers: what question should be asked?

Introduction: Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) refers to a self-perceived experience of decreased cognitive function without objective signs of cognitive impairment in neuropsychological tests or daily living activities. Despite the abundance of instruments addressing SCD, there is no consensus on the methods to be used. Our study is founded on 11 questions selected due to their recurrence in most instruments.

GERO Cohort Protocol, Chile, 2017-2022: Community-based Cohort of Functional Decline in Subjective Cognitive Complaint elderly.

Background: With the global population aging and life expectancy increasing, dementia has turned a priority in the health care system. In Chile, dementia is one of the most important causes of disability in the elderly and the most rapidly growing cause of death in the last 20 years. Cognitive complaint is considered a predictor for cognitive and functional decline, incident mild cognitive impairment, and incident dementia.

Inside minds, beneath diseases: social cognition in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-frontotemporal spectrum disorder.

Objective: To compare social cognition performance between patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and those patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).

Methods: We included 21 participants with ALS, 20 with bvFTD and 21 healthy controls who underwent a comprehensive cognitive battery, including the short version of the Social Cognition and Emotional Assessment (Mini-SEA), which comprises the test and Facial Emotion Recognition Test (FERT); Mini-Mental State Examination; Frontal Assessment Battery; lexical fluency (F-A-S), category fluency (animals/minute), digit span (direct and backwards) tests and the Hayling test. A post hoc analysis was conducted with the patients with ALS divided into two subgroups: patients without cognitive impairment (ALScn; n=13) and patients with cognitive impairment (ALSci; n=8).

The Structured Interview for Insight and Judgment in Dementia: Development and validation of a new instrument to assess awareness in patients with dementia.

Introduction: Poor insight about their cognitive and functional deficits is highly prevalent in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, there is a lack of reliable, valid instrumentation to measure this construct. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a semistructured interview to assess insight and judgment in patients with AD and to provide information regarding the assessment of competency and risk in this population.

Methods: We validated the Structured Clinical Interview for Insight and Judgment in Dementia (SIJID) in a consecutive series of 124 patients with probable AD.

The relationship of clinical, cognitive and social measures in schizophrenia: a preliminary finding combining measures in probands and relatives.

This study examines performance of schizophrenia patients, unaffected relatives and controls in social cognition, cognitive and psychiatric scales looking for possible markers of vulnerability in schizophrenia. Performance of schizophrenia patients from multiplex families, first-degree relatives, and matched controls was compared and, subsequently, discriminant analysis method was used for identifying the best predictors for group membership. By using Multigroup Discriminant Analyses on the three groups, the best predictors were PANSS, Premorbid Adjustment Scale, Faux Pas test, and a face/emotion categorizing task.

Olfactory deficits and cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Olfactory deficits and executive dysfunction have been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the association between these deficits has not been thoroughly examined.

Methods: We studied 44 PD subjects and 17 age-matched controls.

Clinical spectrum of Kufor-Rakeb syndrome in the Chilean kindred with ATP13A2 mutations.

We report the clinical features of the original Chilean family with Kufor-Rakeb syndrome (KRS) that led to the discovery of the ATP13A2 gene at the PARK9 locus. KRS is a rare juvenile-onset autosomal recessive disease characterized by progressive Parkinsonism, pyramidal signs, and cognitive decline in addition to vertical gaze palsy and facial-faucial-finger minimyoclonus. Neurological and neuropsychological examination during a 10-year period, videotaping, neuroimaging, and measurement of DNA methylation of the ATP13A2 promoter region were performed.

Quetiapine for insomnia in Parkinson disease: results from an open-label trial.

Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic with sedative properties frequently used to treat hallucinations and psychosis in Parkinson disease (PD). The objective of this trial is to evaluate quetiapine for insomnia in nonpsychotic PD patients. Fourteen consecutive PD patients with frequent insomnia and without psychotic symptoms were treated openly for 12 weeks with a single evening dose of quetiapine.