We constructed a Chinese version of the cognitive component of the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-Cog). In order to accommodate illiteracy, the Chinese version used pictures instead of words for assessing recall and recognition. The Chinese ADAS-Cog was administered to 125 individuals with no dementia, 127 with questionable dementia, and 77 with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Their age range was 51–92 years and their education range was 0–20 years. The Chinese ADAS-Cog had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87) and very high interrater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, or ICC, = 0.99) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.96). It had high correlations with scores on the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (Pearson’s r = 0.85), the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI, Pearson’s r = –0.88), and CASI-estimated scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (Pearson’s r = –0.85). Performance on the Chinese ADAS-Cog was uninfluenced by age or gender, nor by education level except within the low education range of 0–6 years. Its memory items were best for early detection of dementia; its language items were best for monitoring the progression of dementia. This study found that the Chinese ADAS-Cog is a good instrument for use with Chinese AD patients.

The Clock-Drawing Test (CDT) has been used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as a supplement to cognitive tests that focus on memory impairment. We examined a comprehensive scoring system of the CDT in screening of AD in a Chinese population and derived a simplified scoring system. All 403 (144 AD and 259 nondemented) subjects were administered the CDT, including both the drawing part (CDT-D) and the copying part (CDT-C). The Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument and the Clinical Dementia Rating were also administered. Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to develop a simplified CDT scoring system. The optimal CDT cutoff scores (CDT-D: 10/11; CDT-C: 12/13) show intermediate sensitivity (CDT-D: 66.7%; CDT-C: 51.4%) and specificity (CDT-D: 74.5%; CDT-C: 74.1%). The simplified 3-item CDT scoring system, with a cutoff score of 2/3, has a sensitivity of 72.9% and a specificity of 65.6%; it can be used as a quick test for AD screening.

The Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) contains nine cognitive domains. Its total score has been used to screen for dementia in epidemiological studies conducted in the US, Japan and Taiwan, but its usefulness in distinguishing different levels of dementia has not been examined. This study was conducted to compare CASI scores of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with different levels of severity of dementia. The CASI was administered to 475 AD patients with mild, moderate or severe dementia according to the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. The patients’ scores were compared to the scores of 475 age-, education- and gender-matched control subjects. More specifically, each patient’s score, X, was transformed to a z score with reference to the mean and SD of the scores of the control group, where z = (X – mean)/SD. Then, the mean of the z scores and the percentage of patients with z scores of <–2.0 were compared among the three patient groups. For the CASI total score and all of its nine domain scores, the mean z score decreased (except that for short-term memory) and a higher percentage of patients scored below the normal range with increasing severity of dementia. This study validates the usefulness of the CASI for assessing the severity of dementia. The domain scores differed in their relative usefulness for detecting dementia and for distinguishing in different levels of dementia.

The epsilon4 allele of apolipoprotein (apo E) is one of the risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). We evaluated the association between apo E genotypes and depression in patients with AD. A psychiatrist interviewed all patients and their caregivers for depression using a Chinese version of the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised, and for the severity of depression using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). Twenty-five of the 149 patients with AD were diagnosed with depressive disorders. The numbers of patients in each apo E genotype were 10 in epsilon2/3, 2 in epsilon2/4, 74 in epsilon3/3, 46 in epsilon3/4, and 17 in epsilon4/4. We did not find an association between depression and the presence or absence of the epsilon4 or epsilon2 allele. The HDRS scores were not different in patients with AD with the epsilon4 or epsilon2 allele or in those patients without them. Our study did not find an association between depression and the apo E epsilon4 or epsilon2 allele in AD.

Methods for synthesizing bistolane liquid crystal materials with lateral methyl and ethyl substituents are presented. Some of the bistolanes are nematic at room temperature. These highly conjugated mesogens exhibit wide nematic ranges, small enthalpies of fusion, high birefringence and modest viscosity. Their potential applications for at panel displays employing light scattering or Bragg re ection and for infrared optically phased arrays are foreseeable.