Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale: The Validation of the Scale in Greece in Elderly Demented Patients and Normal Subjects

Abstract

Introduction: The Alzheimer Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS) is a scale specifically structured for the assessment of the cognitive decline and behavioral disorder seen in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients. Aim of the Study: The validation of ADAS in the Greek population. Material: One hundred and thirty-one subjects took part in the current study. Fifty of them were nondemented subjects (35 normal subjects and 15 suffering from age-associated memory impairment) and 81 demented patients (68 AD patients and 13 vascular dementia, VD, patients). Method: Diagnosis was made according to DSM-IV and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria. Hachinski Ischemia Scale was used to help to differentiate between AD and VD patients. Geriatric Depression Scale was used to quantify depressive symptomatology. MMSE and CAM-COG were used to assess the cognitive functioning of all subjects and FRSSD for the assessment of daily functioning. All subjects underwent a complete laboratory and biochemical testing, according to the protocol proposed in CAMDEX. All demented patients underwent brain CT. Results: ADAS-Cog discriminates perfectly AD patients and nondemented subjects at the score level of 13/14 and/or 14/15. Principal components analysis, using only AD patients, revealed 4 factors: cognitive, psychotic, depressive, and ''severe apraxia'' factors. Conclusion: ADAS is suitable for use in the discrimination between AD patients and nondemented subjects. It is also suitable for a more comprehensive assessment of the clinical symptomatology of AD patients, and for the evaluation of new therapeutic methods for AD, as well.

Development of the Korean version of Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS‐K)

“…In ROC analysis, ADAS-K displayed high diagnostic efficacy (AUC 0.945 for ADAS-K-total, AUC 942 for ADAS-K-cog). The optimal cut-off point 15/16 (sensitivity 90%, specificity 83%) of ADAS-K-cog was similar to that reported from a previous study featuring a Greek version (Tsolaki et al, 1997).…”

The Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale: Findings from a Low-Education Population

“…In contrast, using all 11 items (score range 0-70) and a cut-off (6) score of 12 for AD, the sensitivity was 0.95 and the specificity was 0.97. The high internal consistency, reliability, and validity of the Chinese ADAS-Cog compare favorably with findings based on its version in English [1,2,3,10] or other languages [7,9]. These findings pave the way for its use in AD drug trials and other research studies for Chinese populations.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that the cognitive subscale of the ADAS, or ADASCog, had high internal consistency and test-retest reliability [2], was minimally influenced by education and was highly effective in detecting AD and following its progression [3]. By now the ADAS has been translated into Japanese [4], German [5], French [6], Greek [7], Spanish [8], and Italian [9], and it is one of the most popular instruments used for assessing the efficacy of drug treatment of AD [10].…”

Validity of Different Linguistic Versions of the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale in an International Multicentre Alzheimer’s Disease Trial

“…The sample of the study was composed of demented patients with both MID and AD, similarly to previous studies [9,30,37].…”

“…In 1997, a Greek version was also validated on 50 nondemented subjects and 81 demented patients with AD and multi-infarct dementia (MID), and the results show that the ADAS cognitive score discriminates perfectly between AD patients and non-demented subjects at the cut-off score of 14 [30]. Versions of ADAS in non-English languages have already been used in Japan [31] and in France [32].…”