==== Front
Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3293
igaa057.3293
Abstracts
Session 10180 (Late Breaking Poster)
Cognition
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Neuropsychiatric Symptoms by Cognitive Status for Mexican-Americans Aged 85 and Older
Vu Lan  
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”893 893
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Older adults with dementia and cognitive impairment often experience neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). Few studies have investigated the presence of NPS among older Mexican-American adults. Our objective was to describe the NPS of Mexican-Americans 85 years and older according to cognitive status. Data came from wave 9 (conducted in 2016) of the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly. The final sample consisted of 381 care recipients aged 85 years and older, along with their caregivers. The 12-item Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI-12) was administered to measure behavioral and psychiatric symptoms among the care recipients. Cognitive impairment was defined as a score of 18 or less on the Mini Mental Status Exam (MMSE). Care recipients with a diagnosis of dementia as reported by the caregiver were also classified as cognitively impaired. Overall, 259 (68.0%) participants had one or more NPS. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the average marginal effect (range = -1 to 1) of cognitive impairment on NPS, controlling for care-recipient characteristics. Approximately 87% of care recipients with cognitive impairment had at least one NPS compared to 55.8% of those without cognitive impairment (p<0.01). The predicted probability of having one or more NPI symptoms was 0.25 percentage points (95% CI=0.14-0.35) higher for participants with cognitive impairment than those without. NPS are present in the majority of older Mexican American adults, particularly in those with cognitive impairment. Future research could also investigate sociodemographic correlates of NPS.