BACKGROUND: The aims of this study were to establish the diagnostic accuracy of the European Cross-Cultural Neuropsychological Test Battery (CNTB) for dementia in different ethnic populations in Western Europe, to examine its ability to differentiate cognitive impairment profiles for dementia subtypes, and to assess the impact of demographic variables on diagnostic properties.

METHODS: The study was a Western European cross-sectional multi-center study. A total of 66 patients with dementia and 118 cognitively intact participants were included across six memory clinics; 93 had ethnic minority background and 91 had ethnic majority background. Tests in the CNTB cover global cognitive function, memory, language, executive functions, and visuospatial functions.

RESULTS: Significant differences with moderate to large effect sizes were present between patients with dementia and control participants on all CNTB measures. Area under the curves (AUC) ranged from .62 to .99 with a mean AUC across all measures of .83. Comparison of ethnic minority and majority groups generally revealed higher sensitivity in the minority group but no significant difference in the mean AUC's across all measures (.84 vs78, P = .42). Comparison of impairment profiles for patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and non-AD dementia revealed that AD patients were significantly more impaired on the memory domain, whereas patients with non-AD dementia were more impaired on the executive functions domain.

CONCLUSIONS: The CNTB was found to have promising cross-cultural diagnostic properties for evaluation of dementia in the targeted minority and majority populations and could represent a valid cross-cultural alternative to other well-established neuropsychological test batteries when assessing patients from these populations.