Because the MRI sample was smaller than the cognitive sample, we may not have had enough power to detect differences in a measure such as HbA1c level, which only reflect blood glucose levels during the relatively short period of ∼3 months, whereas diabetes duration reflects the cumulative effect of the disease over years.
The battery of cognitive tests sampled a variety of specific cognitive abilities, with an emphasis on memory and processing speed.
Details of the development of the survey including piloting, cognitive interviewing, sampling, sample size calculations, and details of response rates—have been reported elsewhere.
A major challenge is that conventional neuropsychological tests, the most practical tools for broadly sampling cognitive functions in treatment trials, are polyfactorial, so that task performance is influenced by multiple cognitive operations.
However, research results are inconsistent regarding the magnitude and pattern of cognitive difficulties due to heterogeneous samples, sampling procedures, cognitive abilities assessed, and study designs (1, 2).
Here we present an analysis of neuropsychological deficits detected using a screen designed to fall between other screens by being 'broad' (testing multiple cognitive abilities) but 'shallow' (sampling the abilities briefly, to be time efficient) – the BCoS.
For an integrated measurement of non-cognitive facets, embedded experience sampling (EES; see above) was used.
On two separate test sets of 92 ("AD" Alzheimer's samples against control) and 47 ("MCI" mild cognitive impairment samples) the signature was able to show an overall effectiveness of 81% and 91% for AD predictability.
This revealed the diversity of individual beliefs and practices in the cognitive interview sample.
