Cognitive Outcomes and Relationships with Phenylalanine in Phenylketonuria: A Comparison between Italian and English Adult Samples

Cristina Romani*, Filippo Manti, Francesca Nardecchia, Federica Valentini, Nicoletta Fallarino, Claudia Carducci, Sabrina De Leo, Anita MacDonald, Liana Palermo, Vincenzo Leuzzi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We aimed to assess if the same cognitive batteries can be used cross-nationally to monitor the effect of Phenylketonuria (PKU). We assessed whether a battery, previously used with English adults with PKU (AwPKU), was also sensitive to impairments in Italian AwPKU. From our original battery, we selected a number of tasks that comprehensively assessed visual attention, visuo-motor coordination, executive functions (particularly, reasoning, planning, and monitoring), sustained attention, and verbal and visual memory and learning. When verbal stimuli/or responses were involved, stimuli were closely matched between the two languages for psycholinguistic variables. We administered the tasks to 19 Italian AwPKU and 19 Italian matched controls and compared results from with 19 English AwPKU and 19 English matched controls selected from a previously tested cohort. Participant election was blind to cognitive performance and metabolic control, but participants were closely matched for age and education. The Italian AwPKU group had slightly worse metabolic control but showed levels of performance and patterns of impairment similar to the English AwPKU group. The Italian results also showed extensive correlations between adult cognitive measures and metabolic measures across the life span, both in terms of Phenylalanine (Phe) levels and Phe fluctuations, replicating previous results in English. These results suggest that batteries with the same and/or matched tasks can be used to assess cognitive outcomes across countries allowing results to be compared and accrued. Future studies should explore potential differences in metabolic control across countries to understand what variables make metabolic control easier to achieve.
Original languageEnglish
Article number3033
Number of pages21
JournalNutrients
Volume12
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Oct 2020

Bibliographical note

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access
article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

  • Cognitive outcomes
  • Cross-countries
  • Cross-cultural
  • PKU
  • Phe associations

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Cognitive Outcomes and Relationships with Phenylalanine in Phenylketonuria: A Comparison between Italian and English Adult Samples'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this