Author(s): Félix Bermejo P *
Elderly cognitive decline is a well-known disorder that affects many people. One of the first medical definitions for this clinical reality was Kral’s “benign and malignant senescent forgetfulness”. After Kral, many authors proposed other entities of memory impairment or cognitive decline in the elderly: “Age-associated memory impairment”, “Agerelated memory decline”, “Ageing-associated cognitive decline”, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and “Cognitive Impairment Non-Dementia” (CIND) of the Canadian Study. And very recently, the DSM-V defined the elderly cognitive decline as a “Minor Neurocognitive Disorder”. By large, MCI had far more citations than any other predementia state in MEDLINE (more than 8,000 reviews in this medical database). This success in the medical literature is rather the expression of a controversy than a well-defined clinical disorder. In fact, its medical birth, near 30 years ago, was as a research entity that precludes dementia. The theoretical definition of MCI is quite clear (A cognitive decline with an increased dementia risk); the problem is the operational definition of this cognitive decline in many elderly that have produced, along the time many definitions and subtypes. In summary, MCI is defined as cognitive decline (of one or more cognitive domains, mainly memory) with normal or near normal functional activities of the patient, and obviously, no dementia. According to the type and extension of the affected cognitive domain, MCI has received several subtyping: Amnestic- only memory affected, non-amnestic- deficit in another cognitive domain different from the memory, such as executive capacities. Both of them could be shown alone or in combination (only amnestic MCI, only non-amnestic, or amnestic o non-amnestic plus other cognitive domain affected. There are several well-known characteristics of this entity. First, it is prevalent in the elderly, more prevalent (about 10-15%) that the dementia states (5-10%). Obviously, in both conditions, its prevalence oscillates with the operational definitions used and with the population demographic characteristics studied: age, sex and education. Second, MCI involves an increased risk of dementia and mortality in relation to the normal cognition elders. Third, it is an unstable disorder, many MCI cases do not evolve to dementia, and many others change to normal cognition in a period of 2-3 years. Fourth, MCI is a heterogeneous entity with many risk factors and aetiologies; it is not always the predementia state of the main neurodegenerative disorders of the elderly: Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson disease (PD) and others; cerebral vascular diseases, depression and elderly co-morbidities underpinning many MCI cases. From an epidemiological point of view, it is interesting to comment the MCI definition in three different scenarios: the clinical setting, the population-based surveys, and the trial studies because in these three scenarios, MCI had different characteristics and evolution.
