Background/Aims: Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) can be impaired in mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and the severity of functional disability predicts Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in amnestic MCI (aMCI). This study investigated the functional profiles of aMCI in a Chinese population. Methods: The Disability Assessment for Dementia scores of 56 subjects with single-domain aMCI (sd-aMCI) and 94 with multiple-domain aMCI (md-aMCI) were compared with normal controls (n = 64) and mild AD patients (n = 102). Results: Both the sd-aMCI (2.5 ± 2.5) and md-aMCI (3.7 ± 3.5) groups had more impaired IADL items than the controls (0.7 ± 1.7). Their IADL scores were intermediate, between the control and AD groups. sd-aMCI subjects presented deficits in 7 IADL items involving the ‘meal preparation’, ‘telephoning’, ‘finance’, ‘medications’, ‘housework’, and ‘leisure’ subscales. md-aMCI subjects presented deficits in 14 IADL items involving all subscales of daily activities. The Mini-Mental State Examination and Modified Trail-Making Test Part B scores were the major neuropsychological correlates of IADL performance in aMCI. Conclusion: IADL can be impaired in both sd-aMCI and md-aMCI. Including the functional ability assessment in the evaluation of aMCI may help clinicians to provide appropriate suggestions to maintain daily functioning.

Anticholinergic burden can be successfully and safely reduced through an educational program for primary care physicians, but the benefit of reducing anticholinergic burden remained unclear within the first 12 weeks. Further investigation is required to evaluate the long-term benefits of reducing anticholinergic burden for demented older adults.

Background/Aims: Impairment in visual interpretation, semantic conception, or word retrieval may contribute to the naming errors identified in the Boston Naming Test (BNT). We investigated the possible cognitive mechanism of the naming difficulty in Alzheimer's disease (AD) by analyzing the error patterns presented in the BNT. Methods: The Chinese version of the 30-item BNT (BNT-30) was performed on 115 normal control (NC) subjects and 104 mild-to-moderate AD patients. Accurate rates after semantic and phonemic cues were analyzed. The frequencies of 7 types of error patterns in the AD patients and the NC subjects were compared. Results: The accurate rate after semantic cues was significantly lower in the AD than in the NC groups, but phonemic cues were more helpful than semantic cues to achieve accurate naming in both groups. The AD patients made more errors in all error patterns. Particularly, the frequency of nonresponse errors (n = 806) in the AD group significantly exceeded that in the NC group (n = 382). However, the distribution of the error patterns did not differ between the two groups. Conclusion: Naming difficulties in AD might be attributed to progressive semantic knowledge degradation. The AD and the NC groups differ quantitatively but not qualitatively in the error patterns in confrontation naming.

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