The Utility of the Dementia Severity Rating Scale in Differentiating Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease from Controls

• Published in: Alzheimer disease and associated disorders Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 222 - 228
• Main Authors: Mitchell, Joel C., Dick, Malcolm B., Wood, Amanda Ernst, Tapp, Andre, Ziegler, Raphael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-01-2015
• ISSN: 0893-0341; 1546-4156
• DOI: 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000057

The current study investigated the utility of the Dementia Severity Rating Scale (DSRS) total score to identify individuals at the earliest stage of impairment (i.e., Mild Cognitive Impairment/MCI). In addition, the authors sought to investigate how well the measure correlates with an expanded battery of cognitive tests and other measures of functional abilities. Of the 320 participants included in this study, 85 were normal controls, 96 had single or multiple domain amnestic MCI, and 139 had possible or probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Each participant underwent a thorough cognitive, neurological, and physical examination. Results from this study indicated that the DSRS total scores differed significantly between the three groups (
p
< .001) and accurately identified 81% of the control group, 60% of the MCI group, and 78% of the AD group in a post-hoc discriminant analysis. When combined with a brief cognitive measure (i.e., Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease Word List 5-minute recall test), the DSRS accurately identified 98% of the control group, 76% of the MCI group, and 82% of the AD group. Implications for clinical practice and proposed areas of future research are discussed.