Validation of Screening Tools for Detection of Dementia in Mongolia

Neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementias are increasing as global population growth and aging is rising. Efforts to globally estimate dementia prevalence are challenging as strategies to evaluate, assess, and case-ascertainment methods of these neurological conditions are very heterogeneous, especially in the economically developing parts of the world. The Asian continent comprises widely diverse populations with different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds. A systematic review of cognitive assessment tools in Asia revealed only a few publications with validated cognitive screening tools, as for many other Asian nations and languages no validation studies were reported. The challenges of validating such tools lies in the highly variable cut-offs in the studies reporting educational bias. The central Asian country of Mongolia, with a population of 3.5 million people, has a high prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as vascular cognitive impairment. There is a lack of  standardized neuropsychological assessment tools to define specific symptoms of dementias in Mongolia.