Deterioro cognitivo y trastorno neurodegenerativo en personas con discapacidad intelectual

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the prevalence of cognitive impairment in a sample of individuals with intellectual disability (ID) aged 35 years old and over, with the purpose of establishing an early diagnosis. Participants were 36 individuals with ID whose ages ranged from 35 to 61 years old, all of them receiving services at Fundacion Personas (Asprosub) in Zamora. The Spanish version (Esteba-Castillo et al., 2013) of the Cambridge examination for mental disorders of older people with Down syndrome and others with intellectual disabilities, CAMDEX-DS (Ball, Dodd, Holland, Huppert and Treppner, 2006) was applied. As part of this assessment instrument, the neuropsychological Cambridge Cognitive Examination battery, CAMCOG, aimed at measuring cognitive impairment, was applied; when scores indicated a suspicion of cognitive impairment, an interview with a professional was carried out to obtain information about possible changes that could have arisen in the behavior of our participants. Results indicated that 22% of the sample has a risk of cognitive impairment. According to the informants, these individuals have manifested behavioral and personality changes, and changes in their abilities of daily life. No significant differences were found in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment as a function of age. On the other hand, when analyzing the etiology and the degree of ID (mild or moderate), people with Down syndrome scored significantly lower than those whose ID was not due to this etiology. On the other hand, individuals with moderate ID presented a higher ratio of cognitive impairment than those with mild ID. The results obtained are discussed and the limitations of the study are indicated.