The Brief International Cognitive Assessment in Multiple Sclerosis (BICAMS): results from the German validation study

Background Recent research has convincingly shown that the ability to work mainly depends on the cognitive status in multiple sclerosis (MS). An international committee of experts recommended a brief neuropsychological battery to evaluate cognitive performance in MS. BICAMS comprises three tests, the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), the learning trials of the California Verbal Learning Test II (CVLT-II), and the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R). Objective To validate BICAMS on a sample of German MS patients and healthy controls (HCs). Methods According to the international guidelines for validation, examiner’s instructions were standardized and translated into German. Due to the availability of better normative data for future applications in routine clinical care and classification of individual performance degree, the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) (German version: Verbaler Lern- und Merkfähigkeits-Test, VLMT) was chosen instead of CVLT-II. 172 MS patients and 100 HCs entered the study. BICAMS was administered at baseline and retest (after 3–4 weeks). Results The groups did not differ in age, gender or education. Mean age of MS patients was 43.33 years (SD 11.64); 68% were female and 86.9% had relapsing-remitting MS. Patients performed significantly worse than HCs on the SDMT ( p