ICMR releases MUDRA Toolbox in five Indian languages to diagnose dementia

New Delhi: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has released the Multilingual Dementia Research and Assessment (MUDRA) Toolbox in five Indian languages - Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said that the toolbox includes various cognitive tests to assess different domains of cognition such as attention and executive function, memory, language, and visuospatial functions. Principal of Christian Medical College Ludhiana, Prof Jeyaraj D Pandian said MUDRA Toolbox is a comprehensive tool specifically to diagnose dementia in the Indian population.

 

NCD Head Dr RS Dhaliwal said that it is a unique tool



consisting of various tests and questionnaires and is sensitive to the factors that affect performance on cognitive tests including education, language and culture. MUDRA Toolbox is an initiative undertaken by ICMR Neuro-Cognitive Tool Box (ICMR -NCTB) consortium to transform India's dementia and mild cognitive impairment research and clinical practices. 

It is a collective effort by seven leading centres in India NIMHANS (Bengaluru), AIIMS (New Delhi), SCTIMST (Thiruvananthapuram), NIMS (Hyderabad), Apollo Hospital (Kolkata), Manipal Hospital (Bengaluru) and Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College.