Assessing mild behavioral impairment with the mild behavioral impairment checklist in people with subjective cognitive decline

Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of Mild Behavioral Impairment (MBI) in people with Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD), and validate the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C) with respect to score distribution, sensitivity, specificity, and utility for MBI diagnosis, as well as correlation with other neuropsychological tests. Design: Correlational study with a convenience sampling. Descriptive, logistic regression, ROC curve, and bivariate correlations analyses were performed. Setting: Primary care health centers. Participants: 127 patients with SCD. Measurements: An extensive evaluation, including Questionnaire for Subjective Memory Complaints, Mini-Mental State Examination, Cambridge Cognitive Assessment-Revised, Neuropsychiatric Inventory- Questionnaire (NPI-Q), the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 items (GDS-15), the Lawton and Brody Index and the MBI-C, which was administered by phone to participants’ informants. Results: MBI prevalence was 5.8% in those with SCD. The total MBI-C scoring was low and differentiated people with MBI at a cut-off point of 8.5 (optimizing sensitivity and specificity). MBI-C total scoring correlated positively with NPI-Q, Questionnaire for Subjective Cognitive Complaints (QSCC) from the informant and GDS-15. Conclusions: The phone administration of the MBI-C is useful for detecting MBI in people with SCD. The prevalence of MBI in SCD was low. The MBI-C detected subtle Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) that were correlated with scores on the NPI-Q, depressive symptomatology (GDS-15), and memory performance perceived by their relatives (QSCC). Next steps are to determine the predictive utility of MBI in SCD, and its relation to incident cognitive decline over timeThe study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. PSI2014- 55316-C3-1-R) and the Galician Autonomous Government Grant (ref. ED431C2017/27). S.C. Mallo is funded by a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref. BES-2015-071253)S