A clinical memory battery for screening for amnestic mild cognitive impairment in an elderly chinese population

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) might be more likely to progress to Alzheimer’s disease than single non-memory MCI and multiple domain MCI. After excluding those who did not conform to the inclusion criteria of amnestic MCI or healthy controls, a neuropsychologic battery that included the Mini-Mental State Examination, Clinical Dementia Rating, Chinese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale and Auditory Verbal Learning Test was performed on 150 amnestic MCI and 150 normal control patients. The Chinese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment was measured for its test–retest reliability, sensitivity and specificity. Blood was collected for apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotyping. Compared with the control group, the amnestic MCI group performed significantly worse on all neuropsychological tests, and non-APOE-ε4 carriers in the amnestic MCI group performed better than APOE-ε4 carriers in the amnestic MCI group. The set of neuropsychological tests in our study could distinguish amnestic MCI participants from normal elderly participants accurately. APOE did have a role in amnestic MCI patients, but the magnitude and mechanism of its influence are not fully understood.