Assessing Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge and Cognitive Risk Among a Rural Older Afro-Caribbean Cohort.
E Valerie Daniel, Lisa Ann Kirk Wiese, Janet K Holt
PMID 37705286WHAT IT FOUND
In 55 rural Afro-Caribbean adults, 52.7% scored 11 or lower on the Mini-MoCA, but scores were tied to education.
Knowledge scores rose after educator discussion and health fairs. This was a small pilot.
Key findings
0152.7% of participants scored 11 or lower on the MoCA-brief, so further follow-up was needed to determine cognitive status.
02After participants reviewed and discussed their BKAD answers with a faith-based health educator, with emphasis on health-promoting factors, and also had monthly community health fairs with information and screening for diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, and memory loss, BKAD scores rose significantly from pre to post; the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.
03Only education was significantly associated with higher Mini-MoCA total and Language subscale scores; none of the predictors were significant predictors of Orientation and Recall subscale scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was a pilot with 55 participants and a single-group pretest and retest, so it cannot show that any one part of the education and health fair activity caused the BKAD gain. The BKAD pre to post test reported t(31), while the paper describes 55 participants. Six participants had missing Mini-MoCA subscale scores, so subscale findings were limited. There was no gold-standard cognitive screening measure for comparison, and the MoCA-Basic was not administered because only two Haitian Creole speaking nurses were available. Health literacy was not assessed, and the paper says scores were strongly dependent on years of education, so a low screening score may not mean dementia. The sample was drawn from one rural Haitian church community and excluded people with prior depression or dementia, so results may not apply to other groups or those with existing diagnoses. The group had an average of 7.5 years of formal education, which may affect performance on a language-based cognitive test.
Declared interests
The paper states that the authors declared no competing financial interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the 52.7% scoring 11 or lower as evidence that half of these participants have dementia. This was a small pilot without a gold-standard cognitive diagnosis, and Mini-MoCA scores were significantly associated with years of education, so low scores may reflect education or literacy rather than disease.