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 time.