Evaluation de la mémoire épisodique de l'adulte très âgé : normes au RL/RI-16 et au DMS-48 issues de la cohorte FIBRATLAS

International audienceTo our knowledge, there are few recent French studies looking at the cognitive assessment of people aged over 80. Yet this population, which currently accounts for 6% of the French population and is expected to double by 2080, is particularly affected by neurocognitive disorders, the prevalence of which increases sharply with age.The influence of advanced age on episodic memory performance is frequently reported in the literature, with an accelerated decline from the age of 65 onwards. There is also a positive effect of educational level on cognitive performance in old age, as well as a gender effect, with several studies describing better performance by very old women in verbal episodic memory. To assess episodic memory, the 16-item Free Recall/Indicated Recall test (RL/RI-16 items) and the DMS48 forced-choice visual recognition test are commonly used in clinical practice. They form part of the neuropsychological assessment tests that are essential for the evaluation of cognitive functions and help to direct the clinical examination towards additional tests. French normative data have been published for these two tests but, with the exception of the study by Amieva et al (2007), the age groups of elderly subjects are broad (see for example Van der Linden et al, 2004) or very small for very elderly subjects (Barbeau et al, 2004).The aim of our work is to study the effect of gender and education variables for these two tests, in order to establish norms that can be used in clinical practice. To this end, we studied the RL/RI-16 and DMS48 performances of 107 healthy subjects aged over 82 from the FIBRATLAS cohort.The results confirm the importance of using norms corresponding to the age group for old age, and of taking into account gender and level of education for the RL/RI-16 and level of education for the DMS48

Evaluation des fonctions cognitives chez le sujet très âgé à partir de la cohorte Fibratlas

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French normative data for the Complex Rey Figure Test in healthy subjects aged over 80 years

International audienceTo our knowledge, there are few studies on the cognitive assessment of very old people, over 80 years old in the French population. However, this population, which currently represents 6% of the French population, is particularly affected by dementia (nearly 30% of the population is over 90 years old according to Gil in 2018) and is expected to double by 2080 (Eurostat, 2021). Rey's complex figure test is commonly used to assess visual memory, motor functions, perceptual abilities, and executive functions. This test is part of the minimal neuropsychological assessment to participate in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, as recently recalled by Guichard-Gomez and Hahn (2020). There are many normative data in adults (Fastenau et al, 1999; Casanova et al, 2009; Tremblay et al, 2015; Darwish et al, 2018; Tsatali et al, 2022) but the age group of over 80 years is not well specified. We present here the results of a study of 109 healthy French subjects, aged over 80 years, from the FIBRATLAS cohort. Rey's figure was thus proposed in copy, immediate recall, and delayed recall. We considered both score and time of completion of the 3 tasks. The impact of age and education on test performance was examined. The analysis showed a gender effect for all 3 tasks. There was an effect of education on the completion time of the figure copying task and on the delayed recall score. Based on these analyses, we propose to use in clinical practice, for a French-speaking population of more than 80 years old, normative data established in percentiles, considering gender and education level