free version of moca cognitive assessment

Nasreddine ZS, Phillips NA, Bédirian V, Charbonneau S, Whitehead V, Collin I et al (2005) The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: a brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Stout JC, Andrews SC, Glikmann-Johnston Y (2017) Cognitive assessment in Huntington disease clinical drug trials. Julayanont P, McFarland NR, Heilman KM (2020) Mild cognitive impairment and dementia in motor manifest Huntington’s disease: classification and prevalence. McAllister B, Gusella JF, Landwehrmeyer GB, Lee JM, MacDonald ME, Orth M et al (2021) Timing and impact of psychiatric, cognitive, and motor abnormalities in Huntington disease. The MoCA is a valid, diagnostically sound and feasible cognitive screener in motor-manifest HD patients, whose adoption is thus encouraged in clinical practice and research. The MoCA was able to discriminate patients in the middle-to-advanced from those in the early-to-middle stages of the disease ( p = .037), as well as to differentiate HD patients from both HCs ( p < .001) and PD patients ( p < .001). In identifying patients with cognitive impairment, adjusted MoCA scores were highly accurate (AUC = .92), yielding optimal diagnostics at the cut-off of < 19.945 ( J = .78). The MoCA converged towards cognitive and behavioural measures but diverged from psychiatric ones, being also associated with motor/functional measures from the UHDRS. The same analysis was employed to test its ability to discriminate HD patients from HCs and PD patients. Sensitivity to disease severity was tested, via a logistic regression, by exploring whether the MoCA discriminated between patients in Shoulson-Fahn stage ≤ 2 vs. > 2.

Construct validity was tested against cognitive and behavioural/psychiatric measures, whereas ecological validity against motor-functional subscales of the UHDRS. HD patients further underwent the Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS), self-report questionnaires for anxiety and depression and a battery of first- and second-level cognitive tests. N = 39 motor-manifest HD patients, N = 74 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and N = 92 matched HCs were administered the MoCA. This study is aimed at assessing the clinimetric properties and feasibility of the Italian version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in patients with Huntington’s disease (HD).

Free version of moca cognitive assessment