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The British Journal of Psychiatry (2005) 187: 90
© 2005 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Correspondence

Prevalence of dementia

S. Shaji

Bethsada Hospital, Vengola PO, Pin 683 554, Ernakulam District, Kerala, India. E-mail: sdrshaji{at}rediffmail.com

EDITED BY KHALIDA ISMAIL

We thank Dr Varghese (2005) for his letter regarding our article (Shaji et al, 2005). Lack of education is a potent predictor of poor performance across many items of the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; Katzman et al, 1988). There was no significant difference between total MMSE scores of those who were illiterate and those who were literate in the pilot study conducted with the Malayalam adaptation of the MMSE. Hence it was decided to use the same score for both groups.

We identified 55 cases of dementia among 327 people who scored at or below the cut-off on the MMSE. The one case identified from the 10% of the negatively screened population was counted as one among the ten cases in the negatively screened population of 1607 (i.e. 65 cases in 1934 people aged 65 years and above).

The assessment of risk factors based on retrospective accounts of the carers and an inadequate number of controls for calculating the odds ratios can be considered methodological limitations of the study. The prevalence of dementia increases proportionately with age ({chi}2=40.29, d.f.=5, P<0.001). This {chi}2 value was not given in the text. The number of patients with Alzheimer's disease was 30. The error in the article is regretted.

REFERENCES

Katzman, R., Zhang, M.Y., Ouang-Ya-Ou, et al (1988) A Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination; impact of illiteracy in a Shanghai dementia survey. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 41, 971 -978.[CrossRef][Medline]

Shaji, S., Bose, S. & Verghese, A. (2005) Prevalence of dementia in an urban population in Kerala, India. British Journal of Psychiatry, 186, 136 -140.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Varghese, S. T. (2005) Dementia prevalence (letter). British Journal of Psychiatry, 186, 542.[Free Full Text]





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