BACKGROUND: Chronic illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity have been implicated as risk factors in the development of cognitive impairment (CI), but despite this, definite association between the two conditions in increasing cognitive impairment risk is not well defined. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to examine the association between body mass index (BMI) and cognitive impairment (CI) in elderly patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study conducted in the outpatient clinics of a private hospital in Manila which included elderly patients with Type 2 diabetes. BMI categories of the subjects were determined using the Asia-Pacific criteria and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment – Philippines (MOCA-P) was administered to subjects who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the prevalence of impaired cognition among subjects while risk ratio analysis was used to determine the correlation between BMI and CI. Correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were used to determine the presence of association between cognition (measured by MOCA-P scores) and BMI. For all analysis, a 95% level of significance was used. RESULTS: A total of 109 subjects from the outpatient clinics were included in the study. A high percentage of the study population (90.83%) had CI based on MOCA-P scores. Subjects that belonged to the extremes of BMI- underweight and obese class 2 had higher incidence of CI compared to the other groups. Underweight subjects had 1.103 (95% CI: 1.038 to 1.172) times likelihood of having impaired cognition (p-value 0.0016), while obese 2 subjects had 1.110 (95% CI: 1.040 to 1.184) times likelihood of having impaired cognition (p-value 0.0016). Regression analysis revealed that in subjects with diabetes of less than 10 years, cognition scores were negatively correlated to BMI (p-value 0.0454). Correlation analysis revealed that at the general population level, regardless of the external factors, increasing or decreasing BMI did not have significant effect on cognition scores. CONCLUSION Subjects who belonged to the extremes of BMI-underweight and obese class 2 – had higher incidence of CI compared to the other BMI groups. Among subjects with T2DM duration of less than 10 years, cognition scores tend to be negatively correlated to BMI.
diabetes mellitus, Type 2 ; cognitive impairment ; cognitive dysfunction ; Body Mass Index

OBJECTIVES

The paper aims to determine the effect of acute ischemic stroke on cognition using the MMSE and other neuropsychological tests.

METHODS

All patients admitted at the University of Santo Tomas Hospital Pay Division for acute ischemic stroke from July to August 2007 were included in the study. Eligible patients underwent Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and a detailed neuropsychological testing to characterize cognitive functioning in 6 domains: attention, executive functioning, language, visuospatial ability, visuomotor speed and memory. Scores were presented as mean standard deviation and frequency of cognitive impairment was determined. Chi square and logistic regression was used to examine the association between stroke and the impaired cognitive domain.

RESULTS

There were twenty-five participants eligible in the study. The mean age of the participants was 58.0 ± 13.3, the mean educational level (in years) was 11.6 ± 3.4, the mean MMSE score was 26.4 ± 3.0 and the mean NIHSS score was 4.2 ± 1.8. With a cutoff score of 23 and below, 4 (16%) patients failed the MMSE. On neuropsychological testing, however, all patients failed in at least one area of cognitive domain being tested. Among these patients, 60% failed in the test for visuospatial and executive functions while 92% failed in the test for visuomotor speed.

CONCLUSION

The prevalence of cognitive impairment after an acute ischemic stroke is 16% using the MMSE. Neuropsychological assessment revealed cognitive impairment in all these patients. The results suggest that the role of MMSE in detecting post stroke cognitive impairment in the acute setting maybe limited. More specific neuropsychological tests should be incorporated to detect subtle cognitive impairment especially instruments that test the areas of visuospatial, visuomotor speed and executive functions.

Human ; Cognitive Dysfunction

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Transcranial doppler ultrasonography is a useful tool in screening intracranial stenosis, but one of the major limitation of this procedure is the lack of a suitable acousric window. This study aims rn investigate the profile of patients with inadequate transtemporal window.

METHODOLOGY

All transcranial doppler studies done from June 2002 - May 2007 at a rertiary hospital were reviewed. They were then classified based on the following: 1) presence or absence oftranstemporal window; 2) sex; and 3) age (e"65 orRESULTS

233 out of the 1 ,028 patiems have poor acoustic window. 72% of chem were females and 67% of them were aged 65 and above.

CONCLUSION

Poor transtemporal window occurs in 23% of patients undergoing transcranial doppler and most of them are females 65 years old and above.

Human ; Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial ; Acoustics ; Temporal Bone ; Constriction, Pathologic