A Reliable and Rapid Language Tool for the Diagnosis, Classification, and Follow-Up of Primary Progressive Aphasia Variants

By Stéphane Epelbaum, Yasmina Michel Saade, Constance Flamand Roze, Emmanuel Roze, Sophie Ferrieux, Céline Arbizu, Marie Nogues, Carole Azuar,Bruno Dubois, Sophie Tezenas du Montcel and Marc Teichmann

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease Neurology Primary progressive aphasia

We designed a simple and robust neurocognitive test to screen for primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a rare neurodegenerative syndrome, to help the clinicians in distinguishing PPA from the more common Alzheimer’s disease.

Published in Frontiers in Neurology the 05/01/2021

PARIS-a-reliable-and-Rapid-Language-Tool-for-the-Diagnosis-Classification-and-Follow-Up-of-Primary-Progressive-Aphasia-Variants

Full title A Reliable and Rapid Language Tool for the Diagnosis, Classification, and Follow-Up of Primary Progressive Aphasia Variants

Article abstract:

Background: Primary progressive aphasias (PPA) have been investigated by clinical, therapeutic, and fundamental research but examiner-consistent language tests for reliable reproducible diagnosis and follow-up are lacking.

Methods: We developed and evaluated a rapid language test for PPA (“PARIS”) assessing its inter-examiner consistency, its power to detect and classify PPA, and its capacity to identify language decline after a follow-up of 9 months. To explore the reliability and specificity/sensitivity of the test it was applied to PPA patients (N = 36), typical amnesic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients (N = 24) and healthy controls (N = 35), while comparing it to two rapid examiner-consistent language tests used in stroke-induced aphasia (“LAST”, “ART”).

Results: The application duration of the “PARIS” was ~10 min and its inter-rater consistency was of 88%. The three tests distinguished healthy controls from AD and PPA patients but only the “PARIS” reliably separated PPA from AD and allowed for classifying the two most frequent PPA variants: semantic and logopenic PPA. Compared to the “LAST” and “ART,” the “PARIS” also had the highest sensitivity for detecting language decline.

Conclusions: The “PARIS” is an efficient, rapid, and highly examiner-consistent language test for the diagnosis, classification, and follow-up of frequent PPA variants. It might also be a valuable tool for providing end-points in future therapeutic trials on PPA and other neurodegenerative diseases affecting language processing.