Objective: The current study is an examination of cognitive changes in premanifest gene carriers for Huntington’s disease (preHD), individuals with manifest Huntington’s disease (HD), and healthy adults (HA) using the RBANS.

Background: Previous research has shown that cognitive changes in manifest HD relative to normative data are significantly lower total index scores for the HD group, with most impairment in the attention index. A longitudinal study revealed significant impairment in the attention index over a 16-month span. To our knowledge, there are no published studies examining changes in cognition during the premanifest stage of HD using the RBANS. Detectable cognitive changes in the premanifest group would provide support for the utility of the RBANS in detecting early indicators of cognitive change prior to manifest disease onset.

Method: All participants were administered the RBANS using standard procedures.

Results: Results from a one-way ANOVA test and follow-up post-hoc Tukey HSD test revealed a significant main effect of group in RBANS Total Scale of Index Scores (TSIS) between HD, PreHD, and HA groups F(2, 86) = 28.754, p < .001. More specifically, the HA group had significantly higher RBANS TSIS than the HD group (p < .001, d = 1.89). While there was no significant difference between the HA and PreHD groups in RBANS TSIS(p = .060), a moderate effect size suggests a trend of detectable cognitive differences between these two groups (d = .66). Similarly, a multivariate analysis of variance and follow-up univariate tests revealed a significant main effect of group in each of the five cognitive domain index scores, with the HA group significantly outperforming the HD group in all indexes (ps < .001). While there was not a significant difference between HA and HD groups on four out of the five cognitive indexes, a moderate effect size was found in performance on the Attention index (d = .61).

Conclusion: This study is consistent with previous literature in exhibiting cognitive deficits in HD as compared to HA and PreHD using the RBANS. The current study provides evidence that, not only can cognitive changes in manifest HD be detected through the use of RBANS, but a trend in cognitive changes can be detected between HA and PreHD groups through the use of this test.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/detection-of-cognitive-changes-in-premanifest-huntingtons-disease-using-the-repeatable-battery-for-the-assessment-of-neuropsychological-status/