One year follow-up study on cognitive performances in patients with Parkinson's disease

Abstract

The goal of our study was to assess the cognitive state in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). We studied 58 patients ( 23 men and 35 women, mean age 70,1± 4,5 years and mean educational level 11,9 ±1 years). They were admitted to the Clinic of Neurology from Craiova between March 2007- March 2008 for Parkinson Disease. All the patients met the diagnostic criteria for Parkinson’s Disease. In this study we included only patients in stage I and II on Hoehn and Yahr scale. Thirty-two patients were in stage I and 26 patients in stage II. The patients were treated with levo-dopa monotherapy, dopaminergic agonists monotherapy, or levodopa associated with dopaminergic agonists. We have also included in our study a control group composed of 62 control subjects with the same range of educational level and age. To assess the cognitive state we tested the patients using Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the revised version of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE-R) at baseline, after 6 months and one year later. At baseline the patient group showed a mean MMSE score 27,6 and a mean ACE-R score 89,3. The control subjects showed a mean MMSE score 28,7 and a mean ACE-R score 90,1. One year later the patient group showed a mean MMSE score 25,1 and 84,4 mean ACE-R score. The control group showed a mean MMSE score 26,8 and mean ACE-R score 88,2. The patients with PD showed a greater cognitive impairment than the control subjects. We observed that the patients in stage II Hoehn and Yahr had a greater cognitive impairment than patients in stage I. We have also seen in patient group a cognitive decline across every ACE-R cognitive domain.

Keywords

• cognitive impairment
• parkinson disease
• mmse
• ace-r