Background: Screening cognitive impairment is complex and not an appliance for early screening. Gait performance is strongly associated with cognitive impairment. Objectives: We aimed to explore gait indicators that could potentially screen cognitive dysfunction. Methods: A total of 235 subjects were recruited from June 2021 to June 2022. Four gait tasks, including the walking test, the timed “Up & Go” test (TUG), foot pressure balance (FPB), and one-legged standing with eyes closed test (OLS-EC), were performed. Moreover, in the walking test, participants were instructed to walk at their usual pace for the single-gait test. For the dual-task tests, participants walked at their usual pace while counting backward from 100 by 1s. The data were analyzed by the independent sample t-test, univariate and multivariate logistic regression, a linear trend, stratified and interaction analysis, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and Pearson’s correlations. Results: Among the 235 participants, 81 (34.5%) were men and 154 (65.5%) were women. The mean age of participants was 72 ± 7.836 years. The control, MCI, mild AD, and severe AD groups had means of 71, 63, 71, and 30, respectively. After adjusting for age, sex, education, and body mass index (BMI), the dual-task toe-off-ground angle (TOA) (odds ratio (OR) = 0.911, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.847, 0.979), single-task TOA (OR = 0.904, 95% CI: 0.841–0.971), and the timed “Up & Go” time (TUGT) (OR = 1.515, 95% CI: 1.243–1.846) were significantly associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. In addition, the trend test and stratified analysis results had no significant differences (all p > 0.05). The area under the roc curve (AUC) values of TOA in the dual-task and TUGT were 0.812 and 0.847, respectively. Additionally, TOA < 36.75° in the dual-task, TOA < 38.90° in the single-task, and TUGT > 9.83 seconds (s) are likely to indicate cognitive impairment. The cognitive assessment scale scores were significantly correlated with TOA (all r > 0.3, p < 0.001) and TUGT (all r > 0.2), respectively. Conclusion: TOA and TUGT scores are, in some circumstances, associated with cognitive impairment; therefore, they can be used as simple initial screenings to identify patients at risk.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the EEG microstate characteristics in patients with persistent Omicronrelated Psychiatric Symptoms (ORPS) as well as their correlations with the severity of ORPS. Methods: This study included 31 patients with ORPS, and they were divided into remission group (n=19) and non-remission group (n=12) according to the decrease of Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) at discharge. Multivariate logistic models were applied to analyze the risk features associated with non-remission of ORPS at discharge, and the Spearman rank correlation was adopted to analyze the correlation between the occurrence of microstate class B and BPRS score at admission. Results: The analysis revealed that an increased occurrence of EEG microstate class B was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of non-remission of ORPS at discharge (p < 0.05). Furthermore, a moderate positive correlation was observed between the occurrence of microstate class B and BPRS scores at admission (r = 0.390, p = 0.030), indicating that patients with more frequent microstate class B tended to exhibit more severe psychiatric symptoms at onset. Conclusions: The findings suggest that an increased occurrence of EEG microstate class B is an independent risk factor for non-remission of ORPS at discharge. Additionally, the positive correlation between microstate class B and BPRS scores underscores the potential of microstate class B as a biomarker for the severity of psychiatric symptoms in ORPS patients. Significance: Identifying the increased occurrence of microstate class B at admission could serve as a novel marker for early assessment of ORPS severity and prognostic evaluation.