Background: Accessible measurements for the early detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) are urgently needed to address the increasing prevalence of AD.
Objective: To determine the benefits of a composite MemTrax Memory Test and AD-related blood biomarker assessment for the early detection of MCI-AD in non-specialty clinics.
Methods: The MemTrax Memory Test and Montreal Cognitive Assessment were administered to 99 healthy seniors with normal cognitive function and 101 patients with MCI-AD; clinical manifestation and peripheral blood samples were collected. We evaluated correlations between the MemTrax Memory Test and blood biomarkers using Spearman's rank correlation analyses and then built discrimination models using various machine learning approaches that combined the MemTrax Memory Test and blood biomarker results. The models' performances were assessed according to the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve.
Results: The MemTrax Memory Test and Montreal Cognitive Assessment areas under the curve for differentiating patients with MCI-AD from the healthy controls were similar. The MemTrax Memory Test strongly correlated with phosphorylated tau 181 and amyloid-β42/40. The area under the curve for the best composite MemTrax Memory Test and blood biomarker model was 0.975 (95% confidence interval: 0.950-0.999).
Conclusion: Combining MemTrax Memory Test and blood biomarker results is a promising new technique for the early detection of MCI-AD.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; biomarkers; cognitive dysfunction; neuropsychological tests.