Characteristic profiles of instrumental activities of daily living in different subtypes of mild cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The purposes of this study were to describe restrictions in instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and to assess different patterns of IADL in each MCI subtype.

METHODS: A total of 566 participants, those not cognitively impaired (NCI; n = 311) and MCI patients (n = 255), 60-94 years old (71.25 +/- 6.00), were examined. Neuropsychological tests were administered to participants, and each MCI patient was classified into one of four subtypes. They completed the Barthel ADL and Seoul-IADL (S-IADL) for ADL measures.

RESULTS: There was a significant difference between NCI and MCI in terms of total S-IADL scores. ANOVA and a post hoc Dunnett analysis revealed that MCI patients performed significantly worse on four out of a total 15 items (i.e. telephone, transportation, finances and household appliances). ANCOVA showed a significant difference in S-IADL-MCI (4 of 15 items) between NCI and amnestic MCI-multiple domains after adjusting for age, gender, education and Geriatric Depression Scale (F = 4.257, d.f. = 1,556, p = 0.002).

CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that scorings of specific IADL items are different in MCI subjects, and these items can possibly help in the identification of MCI subtypes, especially amnestic MCI-multiple domains.