Effects of the novel histamine H3 receptor antagonist S 38093 in a non-human primate model of cognitive dysfunction

Abstract

Background: The Literacy Independent Cognitive Assessment (LICA) has recently been developed for screening dementia as a useful neuropsychological test battery in the illiterate as well as the literate people. It consisted of story and words recall tests, stick design and visual recognition test, number stroop test, animal fluency, Corsi block test, calculation, visual semantics test, and naming. The aims of this study are to develop a short form of the LICA(LICA-S) and cross-validate LICA-S. Methods: Factorial analysis of LICA items was used to develop the LICA-S. LICA-S consisted of words recall tests, stick design and visual recognition test, number stroop test, animal fluency, visual semantics test, and naming. Stratified-clustered-random sampling was used, and the sampling size was 626 normal elderly who were administered LICA-S. 293 normal controls were matched with 148dementia patients administered LICA-S by age, sex and education. Test-retest data of the LICA-S was obtained from 35 subjects within a mean time interval of 32.1 days. Results: The LICA-S was not correlated with sex, but with age and education. Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of the shorted LICA(LICA-S) was 0.92, and the item-total correlation was significant. Construct validity was confirmed by evaluating the correlation between the LICA-S and the LICA, K-MMSE and CDR. In respect to a diagnosis of dementia in literate subjects, the LICA-S (cut-off point 70) hada sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 91%, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.978 (S.E.1⁄40.005). With respect to a diagnosis of dementia in the illiterate subjects, the LICA-S (cut-off point 61.2) had a sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 91%. The AUC was 0.982 (S.E.1⁄40.009). The LICA -S was found to have a high testretest reliability (r1⁄4 0.91). There was significant differences of the time reuired for test between LICA and LICA-S (p< 0.05; 32.0 6 6.9min, 18.463.8min). Conclusions: A short version of LICA(LICA-S) had high sensitivity, specificity and test-retest reliability which were comparable to those of original LICA. Thus, the LICA-S can be a useful, brief neuropsychological test battery for the screening of dementia in the illiterate as well as the literate people.