MoCA Scores from HCP Aging Sample

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Brittany Intzandt

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Mar 24, 2025, 1:46:45 PM3/24/25
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Hi there,

I'm working with the HCP aging sample of participants and I've noticed that quite a lot of participants have MoCA score less than 25 (~167 I believe) - this is a large number for a group of cogitively unimpaired individuals. Particularly for some of the participants who are in their 30s to 50s for example and have MoCA scores of less than 20. 

I'm wondering if anyone can speak to this  - maybe some of the data was incorrectly entered or some other explanation I am not thinking of. These are numbers I would expect in someone with MCI transitioning potentially to dementia, not in a 37 yo participant for example. I do appreciate that this is a screening test and not diagnostic in nature, but the scores for a lot of these participants gives me pause.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Brittany Intzandt

Elam, Jennifer

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Mar 25, 2025, 4:28:46 PM3/25/25
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Hi Brittany,

Our data has a mean moca_sum across ages 36-100+ of 25.9. This is in line with a sample from the very large normative Dallas Heart Study (n=2,653) including participants aged 18–85 with a mean score of only 23.4 (SD 4.0) despite a high mean education (13 years) and low mean age (50 years) (https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0b013e318230208a). Both that study and another large sample in Sweden (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5545909/) suggest that the cutoff between MCI (starting at 25 and below) and healthy (≥26) from the original validation study of the MoCA needs to be revised lower for diagnostic accuracy.

 

We also had low thresholds for exclusion at Visit 1 in our goal of including a full spectrum of typically aging subjects.

Exclusion criteria for MoCA:

Ages 22-79: Score of 19 or below

Ages 80-89: Score of 17 or below

Ages 90 and above: Score of 16 or below

 

We did not exclude on MoCA for return visits. 

 

Best,

Jenn

 

 

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Brittany Intzandt

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Apr 2, 2025, 5:06:05 PM4/2/25
to HCP-Users, el...@wustl.edu
Hi Jenn,

Okay fantastic - we wanted to ensure what the data that we fully understood the data and how it was collected/people were excluded based on what.

I'm wondering if you can also speak to the hormone data, in particular the estradiol - how was it collected and what was the range of values? (I ask as we are going through revisions with a journal right now and I can't find this information in any of the protocol manuscripts or previous posts in this group.

Thank you in advance.

Best,

Brittany intzandt

Elam, Jennifer

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Apr 2, 2025, 6:43:17 PM4/2/25
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Hi Brittany,

We collected blood from participants at intake on visit day 1 and submitted it for testing for glucose, metabolites, and hormones, including estradiol. Reference ranges of each test the lab reports (we only requested a subset of tests) are in the attached. Range of the data is <5.0-1669 pg/mL. Some participants reported taking forms of estradiol as a medication and that may have affected their values.

 

Best,

Jenn

 

CLCS_ClinReferenceRanges_20240530.pdf
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