Validation of AD8-Philippines (AD8-P): A Brief Informant-Based Questionnaire for Dementia Screening in the Philippines

AIM: This study was aimed at validating the Filipino version of AD8 (AD8-P). METHODS: Community-dwelling Filipino older persons aged ≥60 years, together with their informants, participated in this study. Psychologists independently interviewed the informants with AD8-P and administered the Filipino-validated Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE-P) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-P) to the older persons. Neurologists and geriatrician conducted physical and neurological examination and Clinical Dementia Rating™ (CDR™) to determine cognitive diagnosis and were blinded with the results of AD8-P. Dementia was diagnosed based on DSM-IV-TR criteria. AD8-P discriminatory ability to screen for dementia was evaluated according to DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for dementia. RESULTS: A total of 366 community-dwelling Filipino older persons aged ≥60 years, 213 with normal cognition and 153 with dementia, and their informants were included in this study. Majority (90%) were at the mildest stage of dementia. Area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUROC) for AD8-P was 0.94 (95% CI 0.92 to 0.96), demonstrating excellent overall predictive power to screen for dementia. The optimal AD8-P cut-off score with best balance sensitivity (91.5%) and specificity (77.9%) was ≥3. CONCLUSION: AD8-P demonstrated good psychometric properties to screen for dementia, even at the earliest stage of cognitive decline.