Category fluency is also predominantly affected in Swiss Alzheimer's disease patients

• Published in: Acta neurologica Scandinavica Vol. 95; no. 2; pp. 81 - 84
• Main Authors: Monsch, A. U., Seifritz, E., Taylor, K. I., Ermini-Fünfschilling, D., Stähelin, H. B., Spiegel, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.1997; Blackwell
• Subjects: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Alzheimer Disease - complications; Alzheimer Disease - physiopathology; Alzheimer's disease; Analysis of Variance; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; category fluency; Chi-Square Distribution; Concept Formation - physiology; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Female; Humans; Language Disorders - etiology; Language Disorders - physiopathology; letter fluency; Male; Medical sciences; Memory Disorders - etiology; Memory Disorders - physiopathology; Mental Recall - physiology; Middle Aged; Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests; Phonetics; receiver operating characteristic curve; ROC Curve; Semantics; Sensitivity and Specificity; Switzerland; Verbal Behavior - physiology; verbal fluency; Switzerland; Europe; Human; Nervous system diseases; Verbal fluidity; Tongue; Alzheimer disease; Central nervous system disease; Exploration; Degenerative disease; German; Comparative study; Cerebral disorder
• ISSN: 0001-6314; 1600-0404
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1997.tb00073.x

Objectives – To establish the comparative efficacy to differentiate between Swiss patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and elderly normal control subjects (NC) on two different verbal fluency tasks: category fluency and letter fluency. Material and methods – Fifty Swiss German DAT patients in the early stages of the disease and 50 matched normal control subjects were compared on letter and category fluency tasks. Results – DAT patients exhibited an overproportional impairment on category fluency as compared with letter fluency. Receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) showed that category fluency correctly classified a significantly higher number of DAT patients and NC subjects (84%) than letter fluency (70%). Conclusion – As similar findings have been described for English‐speaking DAT patients, we conclude that deficiencies in category fluency are a general phenomenon, reflecting impaired structures of semantic knowledge occurring early in the course of Alzheimer's disease.