[Dementia Competence Network. Results and outlook]

CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease) Neuropsychology Assessment Battery: 35 Years and Counting

BACKGROUND

In 1986, the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) was mandated to develop a brief neuropsychological assessment battery (CERAD-NAB) for AD, for uniform neuropsychological assessment, and information aggregation. Initially used across the National Institutes of Aging-funded Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers, it has become widely adopted wherever information is desired on cognitive status and change therein, particularly in older populations.

OBJECTIVE

Our purpose is to provide information on the multiple uses of the CERAD-NAB since its inception, and possible further developments.

METHODS

Since searching on "CERAD neuropsychological assessment battery" or similar terms missed important information, "CERAD" alone was entered into PubMed and SCOPUS, and CERAD-NAB use identified from the resulting studies. Use was sorted into major categories, e.g., psychometric information, norms, dementia/differential dementia diagnosis, epidemiology, intervention evaluation, genetics, etc., also translations, country of use, and alternative data gathering approaches.

RESULTS

CERAD-NAB is available in ∼20 languages. In addition to its initial purpose assessing AD severity, CERAD-NAB can identify mild cognitive impairment, facilitate differential dementia diagnosis, determine cognitive effects of naturally occurring and experimental interventions (e.g., air pollution, selenium in soil, exercise), has helped to clarify cognition/brain physiology-neuroanatomy, and assess cognitive status in dementia-risk conditions. Surveys of primary and tertiary care patients, and of population-based samples in multiple countries have provided information on prevalent and incident dementia, and cross-sectional and longitudinal norms for ages 35-100 years.

CONCLUSION

CERAD-NAB has fulfilled its original mandate, while its uses have expanded, keeping up with advances in the area of dementia.

[Dementia in the focus of health research : A comparative analysis of current ageing studies]

Health research on an increasingly aging population calls for careful consideration of aging-associated phenomena, such as dementia. Accounting for such diseases is a necessary step for gaining a view of health in the elderly. It is moreover imperative to gather data on subjects' mental limitations in surveys to better evaluate the validity of answers disclosed by elderly participants. This article discusses the availability of data on individuals suffering from dementia in national studies on aging. It centers on the question of how surveys respond to the challenge of diagnosing dementia. The analysis is based on a literature review, which focuses on national studies on aging that were conducted no later than 2005, and that enforced an upper age limit of at least 79 years old for their subjects. By evaluating these published studies, and analyzing their data descriptively, it was determined how many subjects suffering from dementia were part of each sample, and which methods were applied to diagnose such illnesses. Overall, the availability of data on age and aging is satisfactory in Germany. The literature review discovered seven studies on aging, as well as five that lend themselves to a framework oriented toward research on aging. The number of subjects suffering from dementia in the samples is between 0 and 14% - over half of the studies reach less than 1.5% of those affected. These results thus point out problems in surveying individuals suffering from dementia. They highlight the limitations of studies on aging that do not account for dementia in their subjects. The following discussion aims to contribute to the debate on relevant research methodology, and to the development of methodological approaches that consider dementia as a crucial factor.