What is it about?
The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) assesses frequency and severity of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). A composite score is calculated from frequency and severity. The composite score has been found useful to measure treatment-related changes in neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia. It was hypothesized that in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) the frequency score could be determined more reliably and might therefore be more sensitive to treatment-related changes than the composite score. Our study in patients with MCI showed that the composite score is as sensitive to change as the frequency score.
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Why is it important?
An increasing number of clinical trials of new drugs under development enrol patients who are in the early (pre-dementia) stages of Alzheimer's disease. Like patients with dementia, such patients often have NPS. It is therefore important to know how sensitive available instruments are to detect treatment-related changes.
Perspectives
When we were planning a study in patients with MCI and NPS, there was this hypothesis in favour of the frequency score, but there were no data. So we first looked whether there was any trend towards better sensitivity of the frequency score in patients with mild compared to those with moderate dementia (Cummings et al., International Psychogeriatrics 2013;25:431-438). There was no such trend.
Robert Hoerr
Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co. KG, Karlsruhe, Germany
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sensitivity to change of composite and frequency scores of the neuropsychiatric inventory in mild cognitive impairment, International Psychogeriatrics, July 2014, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1041610214001185.
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