Comparative accuracies of two common screening instruments for the classification of Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and healthy aging
Objective—To compare the utility and diagnostic accuracy of the MoCA and MMSE in the
diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in a clinical cohort.
Method—321 AD, 126 MCI and 140 older adults with healthy cognition (HC) were evaluated
using the the MMSE, MoCA, a standardized neuropsychological battery according to the
Consortium to Establish a Registry of Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD-NB) and an informant based
measure of functional impairment, the Dementia Severity Rating Scale (DSRS). Diagnostic
accuracy and optimal cut-off scores were calculated for each measure, and a method for
converting MoCA to MMSE scores is presented also.
Results—The MMSE and MoCA offer reasonably good diagnostic and classification accuracy as
compared to the more detailed CERAD-NB; however, as a brief cognitive screening measure the
MoCA was more sensitive and had higher classification accuracy for differentiating MCI from
HC. Complementing the MMSE or the MoCA with the DSRS significantly improved diagnostic
accuracy.