THE PREVALENCE OF NEUROPSYCHIATRIC SYMPTOMS IN MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT: A COMPARISON BETWEEN TAIWAN AND WESTERN STUDIES

Abstract

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) may be prevalent in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, little studies compare NPS of MCI between Taiwanese and Western samples. This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 268 participants were recruited from the outpatient clinics of two hospitals in Northern Taiwan from 2007–2011. A total of 249 participants completed the cognitive and neuropsychiatric evaluations, including 90 normal controls (NC) and 159 MCI subjects. The MCI criteria followed Petersen criteria except with more stringent requirement that the neurocognitive impairment had to be 4% below mean of norm. The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) was used to assess the NPS. The prevalence of each neuropsychiatric symptoms was compared between our study and previous studies. The prevalence of at least one NPS in MCI group was 54.7%. Four of the most prevalent neuropsychiatric symptoms in MCI were night-time behavior disturbances (22.0%), apathy (20.1%), irritability (16.4%) and depression (14.5%). When compared with Western studies (including clinical MCI and population-based MCI samples), the prevalence of NPS in our clinical sample was more similar to that of population-based samples, but less than that of clinical sample from Western countries. Our findings suggest the prevalence of NPS in Taiwanese clinical MCI sample is more similar to that of population-based samples, rather than clinical samples, in Western studies. It could be related to easy accessibility to hospitals in Taiwan. Our results are also consistent with previous epidemiological studies in Taiwan showing lower prevalence of depression and anxiety by non-physician interviewers when compared with Western studies.