Associations of Subjective Memory Complaints and Simple Memory Task Scores With Future Dementia in the Primary Care Setting

PURPOSE Family physicians need simple yet comprehensive algorithms to discriminate between community-dwelling older persons who are at increased risk of dementia and those who are not. We aimed to investigate associations between incident dementia and responses to a single question regarding subjective memory complaints (SMC) combined with scores on 2 simple memory tests that are easy to use in the primary care setting. METHODS Analyses were based on data from 3,454 community-dwelling older persons who participated in the 6- to 8-year Prevention of Dementia by Intensive Vascular Care (preDIVA) trial, yielding 21,341 person-years of observation. Participants were considered a single cohort. We used Cox models to assess separate and combined associations of SMC, an imperfect score on the Mini-Mental State Examination delayed recall item (MMSE-5), and an imperfect score on the Visual Association Test (VAT) with future dementia. RESULTS Subjective memory complaints alone were associated with future dementia (hazard ratio [HR] = 3.01; 95% CI, 2.31-3.94; P CONCLUSIONS In persons with SMC, the strength of the association between future dementia and an imperfect MMSE-5 score depends substantially on the VAT score. Key words: dementia; neuropsychological tests; memory; cognition; association learning; self report; geriatric assessment; risk assessment; primary health care
INTRODUCTION A timely dementia diagnosis provides both patients and caregivers the opportunity to adapt to functional deterioration and to initiate appropriate care and treatment. (1) Therefore, it is important that [...]