Artículos de revistas
Use of the frontal assessment battery in evaluating executive dysfunction in patients with Huntington`s disease
Fecha
2009Registro en:
JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY, v.256, n.11, p.1809-1815, 2009
0340-5354
10.1007/s00415-009-5197-0
Autor
RODRIGUES, Guilherme Riccioppo
SOUZA, Carolina Pinto
CETLIN, Roberto Satler
OLIVEIRA, Daniel Sabino de
PENA-PEREIRA, Marcio
UJIKAWA, Liliana Tiemi
MARQUES JR., Wilson
TUMAS, Vitor
Institución
Resumen
The frontal assessment battery (FAB) is a bedside cognitive scale designed to measure executive functions. Huntington`s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor, behavioral, and cognitive dysfunction. The aim of this study was to check the validity of the FAB for the evaluation of cognitive impairment in patients with HD. Forty-one patients diagnosed with HD and 53 healthy controls matched by education, sex and age were evaluated with a validated Brazilian version of the UHDRS, the VFT, the SDMT, the SIT, the MMSE, and the FAB. The diagnosis of HD was made by DNA analysis. FAB scores were lower in patients than in the controls (p < 0.001) and had significant correlations with the VFT (r = 0.79; p < 0.05), the SDMT (r = 0.80; p < 0.05), the SIT (r = 0.72; p < 0.05), the MMSE (r = 0.83; p < 0.05), the FCS (r = 0.79; p < 0.05) and the motor section of the UHDRS (r = -0.80; p < 0.05). The FAB differentiated between HD patients in the initial and later stages of the disease. The one-year longitudinal evaluation revealed a global trend toward a worsening in the second score of the FAB. The results demonstrate that the FAB presents good internal consistency and also convergent and discriminative validity; therefore it is a useful scale to assess executive functions and to evaluate cognitive impairment in patients with HD.