Muangpaisan Weerasak, Intalapaporn Somboon, Assantachai Prasert
Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
J Med Assoc Thai. 2010 Feb;93(2):224-30.
Far too little attention has been paid to the difference of Digit Span test and category verbal fluency test (CVFT) between normal and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects.
To investigate the difference of Digit Span test and CVFT between normal subjects and patients with MCI and study the influence of age, gender, and education on the task performance.
The authors collected data of 77 participants diagnosed with amnestic MCI (from 517 participants screened) and 30 normal subjects aged 50 or over enrolled from communities in Bangkok. The Digit Span test and CVFT (semantic fluency and Controlled word association test for letter fluency) were used to evaluate the subjects.
MCI patients had significantly lower digit span score, in both Digits Forward and Digits Backward, poorer performance on semantic fluency for animals and fruits and letter fluency test. The logistic regression model of MCI diagnosis showed that only Digits Backward score was a predictor of MCI diagnosis (OR 0.643 for each increment of 1 digit, p = 0.009, 95% confidence interval 0.462-0.896). The cut-off point of Digit Backward score was 4 and yielded sensitivity of 77% and specificity of 57%. Females had lower scores than males in every test except semantic fluency for fruits. The digit span and semantic fluency scores decreased as age increased but letter fluency increased correspondently with age. The digit span and CVFT scores increased in parallel with the increase of education.
MCI patients had poorer performance on the Digit Span and CVFT tests than normal age and education matched subjects. Digits Backward test can predict the MCI diagnosis. Age, gender and education have an impact on the performance of the tests.
正常人和轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者在数字广度测试和类别言语流畅性测试（CVFT）方面的差异一直未得到足够重视。
研究正常人与MCI患者在数字广度测试和CVFT方面的差异，并探讨年龄、性别和教育程度对测试表现的影响。
作者收集了77例被诊断为遗忘型MCI的参与者（从517例筛查参与者中选取）以及30例年龄在50岁及以上的正常受试者的数据，这些受试者来自曼谷的社区。采用数字广度测试和CVFT（语义流畅性和字母流畅性的控制词语联想测试）对受试者进行评估。
MCI患者的数字广度得分显著更低，无论是顺背数字还是倒背数字，在动物和水果的语义流畅性以及字母流畅性测试中的表现也更差。MCI诊断的逻辑回归模型显示，只有倒背数字得分是MCI诊断的预测指标（每增加1个数字，比值比为0.643，p = 0.009，95%置信区间为0.462 - 0.896）。倒背数字得分的截断点为4，敏感性为77%，特异性为57%。除了水果语义流畅性测试外，女性在各项测试中的得分均低于男性。数字广度和语义流畅性得分随年龄增加而降低，但字母流畅性得分随年龄相应增加。数字广度和CVFT得分随教育程度的提高而平行增加。
MCI患者在数字广度和CVFT测试中的表现比年龄和教育程度匹配的正常受试者更差。倒背数字测试可预测MCI诊断。年龄、性别和教育程度对测试表现有影响。
