Cognition in chronic kidney disease patients: Evaluation with the Beijing version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment

Abstract

Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) may undergo cognitive impairment. We aimed to explore the cognition of patients with cognitive impairment (CI) and no cognitive impairment (NCI) respectively and the effect of demographics, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), number of comorbidities (NCD), and hemoglobin on CI in Chinese patients with CKD at stage 3–5 treated by nondialysis by using the Beijing version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-BJ). A total of 120 patients with CKD were recruited from the Department of Nephrology at the Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine at in-patient and out-patient follow up. A logistic regression model was performed to assess the effect of these variables on CI of CKD patients. The results indicated that the CI group was mainly in the decline of visuospatial and executive function, abstraction, and memory, compared with the NCI group. In addition, years of education, eGFR and NCD were found as predictors of CI of CKD patients at stage 3–5. Specifically, lower eGFR, less years of education and more comorbidities were risk predictors of CI.

Keywords:

• Chronic kidney disease
• cognition
• demographics
• estimated glomerular filtration rate
• MoCA-BJ

Data availability and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Approval for this study was granted by the ethics committee of Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Suzhou Science and Technology Bureau (Livelihood science and technology – Basic Research on medical and health application) [Grant No. SYSD2019196], Suzhou Health Commission (National “tutorial system” training plan for young backbone talents) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Youth Science Foundation [Grant No. 71904019]. No funding agency had any role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data or in the writing of the manuscript.