ADAS-Cog performance in urban Indian Alzheimer's patients: Implications for culturally appropriate assessment

Abstract

Assessment tools developed for Western populations may not accurately evaluate cognitive impairment in multilingual Indian patients with Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, it is of interest to assess the domain-based performance using the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) among 12 urban Indian patients aged 70–83 years. Memory domains showed the greatest impairment, with the highest scores for Word Recall (4.75±2.96) and Word Recognition (3.75±2.38), whereas language domains such as Comprehension (1.25±0.45) and Word Finding (1.08±0.90) remained relatively preserved. Age showed a significant positive correlation with total ADAS-Cog score (Spearman r=0.65, p=0.022), while education showed no significant association with cognitive impairment. Thus, data shows the cognitive profile of Alzheimer's disease we further emphasize the need for culturally and linguistically adapted cognitive assessment tools for Indian clinical practice.