A nomogram for individualized prediction of mild cognitive impairment in patients with subjective cognitive decline during physical examinations: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

To develop a nomogram for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) undergoing physical examinations in China.

METHODS

We enrolled 370 patients undergoing physical examinations at the Medical Center of the First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin Province, China, from October 2022 to March 2023. Of the participants, 256 were placed in the SCD group, and 74 were placed in the MCI group. The population was randomly divided into a training set and a validation set at a 7:3 ratio. A least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression model was applied to optimize feature selection for the model. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was applied to construct a predictive model. The performance and clinical utility of the nomogram were determined using Harrell's concordance index, calibration curves, and decision curve analysis (DCA).

RESULTS

Cognitive reserve (CR), age, and a family history of hypertension were associated with the occurrence of MCI. The predictive nomogram showed satisfactory performance, with a concordance index of 0.755 (95% CI: 0.681-0.830) in internal verification. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test results suggested that the model exhibited good fit ( = 0.824). In addition, DCA demonstrated that the predictive nomogram had a good clinical net benefit.

DISCUSSION

We developed a simple nomogram that could help secondary preventive health care workers to identify elderly individuals with SCD at high risk of MCI during physical examinations to enable early intervention.