Marco Túlio Gualberto Cintra, Moacir Cesar Silva Tavares, Sérgio Augusto Gomes, Thiago de Oliveira Gonçalves, Luciana Cristina Matos da Cunha, Denise Utsch Gonçalves, Edgar Nunes de Moraes and Maria Aparecida Camargos Bicalho
Introduction: Great efforts have been made to develop diagnostic methods for precisely screen patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who will progress to dementia. Many biomarkers have been studied for that. However, their high costs, small availability and need for invasive procedures sometimes make these biomarkers of limited usefulness. With the advantages of its low cost and being non-invasive, the P300 evoked potential (EP) is one methods under investigation.
Objective: To assess whether the P300 evoked potential can estimate the risk of MCI progression to Alzheimer’s dementia (AD).
Methods: Review of the PubMed database using the descriptors: “evoked potentials”, “Alzheimer’s disease” and “mild cognitive impairment”.
Results: We selected eight among 929 articles after applying the exclusion criteria. From the articles we concluded that the electrode placed at the parietal region is the most effective and that the latency increase and amplitude decrease of the electrode reading are related to the higher risk of progression from MCI to a diagnosis of AD. Most of the selected studies sustain P300 EP to estimate the progression risk from MCI to AD. However, the low number of studies, small sample size and heterogeneous results are pointed as important limitations.
Conclusion: The P300 represents a promising method to estimate the likelihood of the MCI progression to AD. However, more studies are needed to support P300 for daily clinical practice.