TY - JOUR AU - Huang, Vivian AU - Hogan, David B. AU - Ismail, Zahinoor AU - Maxwell, Colleen J. AU - Smith, Eric E. AU - Callahan, Brandy L. PY - 2020/11/23 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Evaluating the real-world representativeness of participants with mild cognitive impairment in Canadian research protocols: a comparison of the characteristics of a memory clinic patients and research samples JF - Canadian Geriatrics Journal JA - Can Geriatr J VL - 23 IS - 4 SE - Original Research DO - 10.5770/cgj.23.416 UR - https://cgjonline.ca/index.php/cgj/article/view/416 SP - 297-328 AB - <p><strong>Background</strong></p><p>Studies of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) employ rigor­ous eligibility criteria, resulting in sampling that may not be representative of the broader clinical population.</p><p><strong>Objective</strong></p><p>To compare the characteristics of MCI patients in a Calgary memory clinic to those of MCI participants in published Canadian studies.</p><p><strong>Methods</strong></p><p>Clinic participants included 555 MCI patients from the PROspective Registry of Persons with Memory SyMPToms (PROMPT) registry in Calgary. Research participants in­cluded 4,981 individuals with MCI pooled from a systematic literature review of 112 original, English-language peer-reviewed Canadian studies. Both samples were compared on baseline sociodemographic variables, medical and psychiatric comorbidities, and cognitive performance for MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.</p><p><strong>Results</strong></p><p>Overall, clinic patients tended to be younger, more often male, and more educated than research participants. Psychiatric dis­orders, traumatic brain injury, and sensory impairment were commonplace in PROMPT (up to 83% affected) but &gt; 80% studies in the systematic review excluded these conditions. PROMPT patients also performed worse on global cognition measures than did research participants.</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p><p>Stringent eligibility criteria in Canadian research studies ex­cluded a considerable subset of MCI patients with comorbid medical or psychiatric conditions. This exclusion may con­tribute to differences in cognitive performance and outcomes compared to real-world clinical samples.</p> ER -