Detecting Cognitive Impairment in Patients with Schizophrenia with the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination

Objective: To assess the feasibility of the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III (ACE) in detecting cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia and to examine the profile of cognitive impairments.

Methods: There were 32 participants with schizophrenia and 32 normal controls were carried out at Thammasat University Hospital, Thailand. They were matched 1:1 using comparable age and educational level. All participants completed the ACE.

Results: Schizophrenia patients had lower mean totals in their ACE scores than normal controls [82.9(8.4) vs 89.6(6.1), p < 0.001]. Analysis of the individual cognitive subdomains demonstrated that patients performed significantly worse than normal controls on three subdomains: attention (p 0.007), memory (p 0.003) and verbal fluency (p 0.018). There were no statistically significant differences in the language (p 0.223) and visuospatial ability domains (p 0.055).

Conclusions: The ACE can detect the cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia. They had a lower cognitive function compared to the normal controls.