Montreal Cognitive Assessment fares well for rapid, reliable screening in SLE

CHICAGO – The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test provides persuasive advantages over the standard neuropsychological test battery often recommended in guidelines as a screening tool for cognitive impairment in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, Nicolas Paez-Venegas, MD, asserted at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.

The MoCA, as it’s known, offers brevity, simplicity, and none of the considerable expense and inconvenience of bringing in a trained specialist to administer a neuropsychological battery. Moreover, in a comparative efficacy study, the MoCA outperformed two other brief screening tools for cognitive impairment – the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Cognitive Symptom Inventory – and showed excellent correspondence with the results of the formal neuropsychological battery, reported Dr. Paez-Venegas, a psychiatrist at the Jalisco Institute of Mental Health, in Zapopan, Mexico.

He presented a cross-sectional study that pitted the three brief screening tests against a gold-standard neuropsychological battery in 44 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) according to the 2012 Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics Criteria, none of whom had any known medical or psychiatric comorbidities.

The MoCA proved to have the best congruence with the findings of the neuropsychological battery, with an area under the curve of 99.4%, 84% sensitivity, and 100% specificity for cognitive impairment. The Mini-Mental State Examination had 55% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while the Cognitive Symptom Inventory displayed 55% sensitivity and 31% specificity.

“We therefore encourage rheumatologists to apply the MoCA test as a valuable and easily implemented tool for detecting cognitive impairment as part of an integrated approach in SLE,” Dr. Paez-Venegas said.

Periodic screening for cognitive impairment in patients with SLE is an important aspect of patient management because cognitive impairment is a common manifestation of the disease, affecting up to two-thirds of patients, and it can have a serious impact upon quality of life and self-concept. Because such screening isn’t a one-time event, resort to a neuropsychological battery becomes particularly problematic. The battery employed in this study included the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Fourth Edition test, the Digit-Symbol test, the Finger-Tapping test of motor control, the Stroop test, Trail Making A and B, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition test, letter-number sequencing, the Wechsler Vocabulary test, the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test, semantic and phonemic fluency tests, and a test of verbal Spanish comprehension. The battery is a comprehensive tool often employed in research studies but is not well suited for use in a busy clinical practice.

Overall, 70% of the SLE patients demonstrated cognitive impairment in one or more domains on the neuropsychological battery. Processing speed was the most frequently affected domain, involving 23 of the 44 patients. Only a single patient displayed abnormal motor control.

The MoCA test assesses attention, executive function, concentration, language, memory, abstraction, orientation, visuospatial cognitive capacity, and calculation.

Dr. Paez-Venegas’s study was published online earlier this year (J Clin Rheumatol 2018 Jul 18. doi: 10.1097/RHU.0000000000000876). He reported having no financial conflicts regarding his study.

[email protected]

SOURCE: Paez-Venegas N et al. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2018;70(Suppl 10): Abstract 708.

CHICAGO – The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test provides persuasive advantages over the standard neuropsychological test battery often recommended in guidelines as a screening tool for cognitive impairment in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, Nicolas Paez-Venegas, MD, asserted at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.

The MoCA, as it’s known, offers brevity, simplicity, and none of the considerable expense and inconvenience of bringing in a trained specialist to administer a neuropsychological battery. Moreover, in a comparative efficacy study, the MoCA outperformed two other brief screening tools for cognitive impairment – the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Cognitive Symptom Inventory – and showed excellent correspondence with the results of the formal neuropsychological battery, reported Dr. Paez-Venegas, a psychiatrist at the Jalisco Institute of Mental Health, in Zapopan, Mexico.

He presented a cross-sectional study that pitted the three brief screening tests against a gold-standard neuropsychological battery in 44 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) according to the 2012 Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics Criteria, none of whom had any known medical or psychiatric comorbidities.

The MoCA proved to have the best congruence with the findings of the neuropsychological battery, with an area under the curve of 99.4%, 84% sensitivity, and 100% specificity for cognitive impairment. The Mini-Mental State Examination had 55% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while the Cognitive Symptom Inventory displayed 55% sensitivity and 31% specificity.

“We therefore encourage rheumatologists to apply the MoCA test as a valuable and easily implemented tool for detecting cognitive impairment as part of an integrated approach in SLE,” Dr. Paez-Venegas said.

Periodic screening for cognitive impairment in patients with SLE is an important aspect of patient management because cognitive impairment is a common manifestation of the disease, affecting up to two-thirds of patients, and it can have a serious impact upon quality of life and self-concept. Because such screening isn’t a one-time event, resort to a neuropsychological battery becomes particularly problematic. The battery employed in this study included the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Fourth Edition test, the Digit-Symbol test, the Finger-Tapping test of motor control, the Stroop test, Trail Making A and B, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition test, letter-number sequencing, the Wechsler Vocabulary test, the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test, semantic and phonemic fluency tests, and a test of verbal Spanish comprehension. The battery is a comprehensive tool often employed in research studies but is not well suited for use in a busy clinical practice.

Overall, 70% of the SLE patients demonstrated cognitive impairment in one or more domains on the neuropsychological battery. Processing speed was the most frequently affected domain, involving 23 of the 44 patients. Only a single patient displayed abnormal motor control.

The MoCA test assesses attention, executive function, concentration, language, memory, abstraction, orientation, visuospatial cognitive capacity, and calculation.

Dr. Paez-Venegas’s study was published online earlier this year (J Clin Rheumatol 2018 Jul 18. doi: 10.1097/RHU.0000000000000876). He reported having no financial conflicts regarding his study.

[email protected]

SOURCE: Paez-Venegas N et al. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2018;70(Suppl 10): Abstract 708.

CHICAGO – The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test provides persuasive advantages over the standard neuropsychological test battery often recommended in guidelines as a screening tool for cognitive impairment in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, Nicolas Paez-Venegas, MD, asserted at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.

The MoCA, as it’s known, offers brevity, simplicity, and none of the considerable expense and inconvenience of bringing in a trained specialist to administer a neuropsychological battery. Moreover, in a comparative efficacy study, the MoCA outperformed two other brief screening tools for cognitive impairment – the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Cognitive Symptom Inventory – and showed excellent correspondence with the results of the formal neuropsychological battery, reported Dr. Paez-Venegas, a psychiatrist at the Jalisco Institute of Mental Health, in Zapopan, Mexico.

He presented a cross-sectional study that pitted the three brief screening tests against a gold-standard neuropsychological battery in 44 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) according to the 2012 Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics Criteria, none of whom had any known medical or psychiatric comorbidities.

The MoCA proved to have the best congruence with the findings of the neuropsychological battery, with an area under the curve of 99.4%, 84% sensitivity, and 100% specificity for cognitive impairment. The Mini-Mental State Examination had 55% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while the Cognitive Symptom Inventory displayed 55% sensitivity and 31% specificity.

“We therefore encourage rheumatologists to apply the MoCA test as a valuable and easily implemented tool for detecting cognitive impairment as part of an integrated approach in SLE,” Dr. Paez-Venegas said.

Periodic screening for cognitive impairment in patients with SLE is an important aspect of patient management because cognitive impairment is a common manifestation of the disease, affecting up to two-thirds of patients, and it can have a serious impact upon quality of life and self-concept. Because such screening isn’t a one-time event, resort to a neuropsychological battery becomes particularly problematic. The battery employed in this study included the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Fourth Edition test, the Digit-Symbol test, the Finger-Tapping test of motor control, the Stroop test, Trail Making A and B, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition test, letter-number sequencing, the Wechsler Vocabulary test, the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure test, semantic and phonemic fluency tests, and a test of verbal Spanish comprehension. The battery is a comprehensive tool often employed in research studies but is not well suited for use in a busy clinical practice.

Overall, 70% of the SLE patients demonstrated cognitive impairment in one or more domains on the neuropsychological battery. Processing speed was the most frequently affected domain, involving 23 of the 44 patients. Only a single patient displayed abnormal motor control.

The MoCA test assesses attention, executive function, concentration, language, memory, abstraction, orientation, visuospatial cognitive capacity, and calculation.

Dr. Paez-Venegas’s study was published online earlier this year (J Clin Rheumatol 2018 Jul 18. doi: 10.1097/RHU.0000000000000876). He reported having no financial conflicts regarding his study.

[email protected]

SOURCE: Paez-Venegas N et al. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2018;70(Suppl 10): Abstract 708.