New Breakthrough in Digital Cognitive Screening for Alzheimer's Disease: Renji Brain Health Team Releases Latest Achievements
Recently, the Brain Health and Cognitive Research Team of Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine published important research results in the official journal of the International Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's&Dementia. This study indicates that using the MemTrax memory cognitive assessment system for cognitive digital screening, constructing a nonlinear model based on the GAMLSS method, and generating cognitive percentile curves for populations of different ages and educational levels can be used for large-scale screening and follow-up of Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive diseases.
With the increasing aging population, China has become the country with the highest number of Alzheimer's disease cases worldwide. There are nearly 10 million patients currently, and it is expected to reach 30 million by 2030. The burden on society and families is becoming increasingly heavy. How to screen and identify high-risk populations, actively manage brain health during the golden window of intervention in the preclinical and early clinical stages of AD, or connect with disease modification treatment in early AD, is the main direction of AD prevention and control. Therefore, developing a simple, efficient, and suitable digital cognitive screening tool for a large population is crucial. This research achievement provides a new approach for active brain health management in AD risk populations.
This study is the first to apply GAMLSS to the cognitive field, successfully fitting the non-linear trend of cognitive changes and establishing the reference norm for the Chinese population of MemTrax. Research suggests that if the evaluation results are within 3% to 10% of the population reference lower limit, it can be considered as a high-risk group for cognitive impairment and requires active brain health management; If the evaluation result is below the reference lower limit of the population by 3% or there is a continuous decrease in the percentile level of the population, it indicates that cognitive impairment may have occurred. It is recommended to conduct memory outpatient evaluation and active intervention. This study further confirms the protective effect of education on cognition and explores the complex cognitive psychological mechanism of "speed accuracy trade-off" based on big data analysis.
![New Breakthrough in Digital Cognitive Screening for Alzheimer's Disease: Renji Brain Health Team Releases Latest Achievements](https://a5qu.com/upload/images/974a200d599898a7d8723a6447849ca1.jpg)
The first author of the paper is Liu Wanwan, a public health physician at Renji Hospital Health Management Center, and the corresponding author is Xu Qun, the head of Renji Brain Health Team, the director of Renji Hospital Health Management Center, and the chief physician of neurology. The center collaborates with multiple communities to carry out early screening, education, and referral of cognitive diseases, and actively carries out the construction of brain health population queues. At present, nearly 60000 MemTrax brain health screenings have been completed. A brain health clinic has been opened in the East Campus of Renji Hospital and a memory impairment clinic has been opened in the South Campus, providing comprehensive early prevention, diagnosis, and treatment work for screening high-risk populations, and managing the entire process of brain health.