Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER US president Joe Biden’s shaky performance on the televised CNN election debate, there have been calls for the 81-year-old to take a cognitive test and some have even lobbied for an age limit for politicians.  

In the wake of all this hullabaloo, Murdoch University has unveiled a new questionnaire that could transform the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. 

The McCusker Subjective Cognitive Impairment Inventory is the culmination of more than a decade of research led by professor of psychology and clinical neuroscience Hamid Sohrabi at Murdoch’s Health Futures Institute.

“The McSCI is a major contribution to the field of cognitive health and dementia screening,” Prof Sohrabi says.

“It can identify individuals with moderate to severe levels of subjective cognitive decline with 99.9 per cent accuracy.”

The 46-item, self-report questionnaire focuses on six cognitive areas – memory, language, orientation, attention and concentration, visuoconstruction abilities and executive function. 

Importantly, the tool will be Open Access, meaning no cost to clinicians or researchers. 

Prof Sohrabi hopes that using the McSCI will become commonplace for early dementia screening. 

“This tool is particularly useful for detecting cognitive decline related to neurodegenerative processes, such as the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. 

Alzheimer’s Research Australia collaborated on developing the questionnaire, and its director of research professor Ralph Martins says the key to managing the disease is to get onto it quickly.

“Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is essential for treatments to be effective – McSCi is a powerful tool to screen individuals at high risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia,” he says.

Of the more than 421,000 Australians living with dementia today, Alzheimer’s disease is the mostly commonly diagnosed form of dementia in older adults.

Recent advances in immunotherapies, specifically the FDA-approved drugs Lecanemab and Donanemab, suggest that the earlier Alzheimer’s is detected, the more effective the treatment.

But the early signs of dementia can be very subtle, and they differ from person to person. According to Dementia Australia, the most common early signs of dementia include, but are not limited to, memory loss, changes in planning and problem-solving abilities and difficulties in completing everyday tasks.

The McSCI can accurately distinguish between these pre-clinical symptoms and those reported in clinical stages of dementia, better detecting those at risk of, rather than those with, dementia.

Prof Sohrabi says they are trying to raise funds to make the McSCI available online for researchers and GPs.

“In addition, many people may have not access to brain imaging and if we do brain imaging on everybody that we suspect to be at risk, we will be facing significant financial outcomes as brain imaging is very expensive,” he says.

“Our test increases the likelihood of minimising these costs by helping to identify those who should do brain imaging.”

If this story has prompted any questions or concerns, please call the National Dementia Helpline 1800 100 500 (24 hours, 7 days a week) or visit dementia.org.au/helpline. 

For more info on dementia see dementia.org.au.