Background/Purpose: The PedAnam (Pediatric Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics) is an automatic software to evaluate cognitive performance that has recently been validated into Portugues (Brazil). The purpose of this study was to (1) Explore and test Cognitive Performance Score (CPS) in childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE). (2) Compare different CPS scores between cSLE and to determine if there is an association with disease activity.

Methods: Consecutive cSLE and healthy controls responded to the PedAnam. We performed the calculation of four scores: (1) PedANAM-CPSUWA using unweighted averages of the accuracy score; (2) PedANAM-CPSPCA principal component analysis; (3) PedANAM-CPSlogit used logistic regression; (4)PedANAM-CPSmultiscore logistic models based on performance parameters with selected subtests. After these calculations, we observed the correlation between the CPS indices and compared the performance of patients and healthy controls. Cognitive impairment was determined by z-scores and considered present if ≤2 SD from healthy controls. Disease activity was evaluated through SLE disease activity score and cutoff of 3 was considered active disease.

Results: We included a total of 50 consecutive cSLE (45 [90%] women; median age = 14 years; age range = 9–18 years) and 50 healthy controls (44 [88 %] women; median age = 15; age range = 9-18 years). We observed a correlation between the PedANAM-CPSUWA and the PedANAM-CPSPCA (r = 0.99), PedANAM-CPSPCA and PedANAM-CPSmultiscore (r = -0.60) logit and PedANAM-CPSUWA (r = -0.56). We observed statistically significant differences between patients and healthy controls in the PedANAM-CPSUWA and PedANAM-CPSPCA scores (P = 0.001). Cognitive impairment was observed in12 (24%) cSLE patients and 1 (2%) healthy controls (p < 0.001) by the PedANAM-CPSUWA index and using the PedANAM-CPSPCA index. An association between disease activity and PedANAM-CPSUWA index (p=0.01) and PedANAM-CPSPCA index (p=0.002) was observed.

Conclusion: After the translation and validation process, this is the first study using the CPS in Brazilian version of PedANAM and we identified two of the metrics that were able to differentiate between cSLE and healthy controls. Worse performance with disease activity was observed. Funding FAPESP (CEPID BRAINN 13/07559-3)

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/cognitive-performance-score-of-the-pediatric-automated-neuropsychological-assessment-metrics-software-in-a-brazilian-cohort-and-its-association-with-disease-activity/