The use of the Hungarian Test Your Memory (TYM-HUN), MMSE, and ADAS-Cog tests for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in a Hungarian population: a cross-sectional study

Background Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) often presages the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Accurate and early identification of cognitive impairment will substantially reduce the burden on the family and alleviate the costs for the whole society. There is a need for testing methods that are easy to perform even in a general practitioner’s office, inexpensive and non-invasive, which could help the early recognition of mental decline. We have selected the Test Your Memory (TYM), which has proven to be reliable for detecting AD and MCI in several countries. Our study was designed to test the usability of the Hungarian version of the TYM (TYM-HUN) comparing with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) in MCI recognition in the Hungarian population. Methods TYM test was translated and validated into Hungarian (TYM-HUN) in a previous study. The TYM-HUN test was used in conjunction with and compared with the MMSE and the ADAS-Cog. For our study, 50 subjects were selected: 25 MCI patients and 25 healthy controls (HC). Spearman’s rank correlation was used to analyse the correlation between the scores of MMSE and ADAS-Cog with TYM-HUN and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was established. Results MCI can be distinguished from normal aging using TYM-HUN. We established a ‘cut-off’ point of TYM-HUN (44/45points) where optimal sensitivity (80%) and specificity (96%) values were obtained to screen MCI. The total TYM-HUN scores significantly correlated with the MMSE scores ( ρ = 0.626; p < 0.001) and ADAS-Cog scores ( ρ = − 0.723; p < 0.001). Conclusions Our results showed that the TYM-HUN is a reliable, fast, self-administered questionnaire with the right low threshold regarding MCI and can be used for the early diagnosis of cognitive impairment.