Clinical and neuropsychological profile of persons with mild cognitive impairment, a hospital based study from a lower and middle income country

Mild Cognitive impairment (MCI) is an important pre-dementia stage to be identified towards prevention. We screened a large number of older adults seeking help at hospital and community towards a diagnosis of MCI and this study describe their clinical and neuropsychological profile. Older adults aged 60 years & above seeking help at NIMHANS outpatient & community services were screened for early cognitive deficits. Persons were diagnosed to have MCI according to Petersen's criteria, after detailed clinical and neuropsychological assessments. Age, gender and education matched healthy controls were recruited for comparison. A total of 7469 older adults were screened during the study period (July 2012-December 2014). Less than 1% (n = 56) were diagnosed with MCI. Majority were males, from urban background with an average of 13 years of education. They presented mainly with memory disturbances, more than 75% (n = 43) were found to have amnestic type of MCI (aMCI). Of the aMCI subjects, majority (80%) had deficits in more than one cognitive domain. They performed significantly worse (p < 0.001) on tests of episodic memory, logical memory, attention and executive functions. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were prevalent in 55% of MCI group and influenced their cognitive scores. The findings suggest that persons with MCI perform worse not only on memory tasks but also on some of the attention and executive functions tasks. As observed in earlier studies, amnestic multiple-domain MCI was the most common type of MCI in this study population. Indigenous assessment tools were of significant value in distinguishing MCI from normal ageing.