Cognitive function assessment in idiopathic Parkinson's disease

Abstract

-Idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by reduced nigrostriatal and cortical dopaminergic influence, with changes in movement and, subsequently, behavioral and cognitive disturbances. We studied cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease by assessing a group of 30 idiopathic Parkinson's disease patients with an average age of 64.23 years (PG group) and compared our findings with those for a control group of 30 patients (CG group). All the patients were submitted to the following assessments: motor function, using the UPDRS; staging, using the Hoehn-Yahr scales (PG group only); depression, using the Montgomery-Asberg scale; attention impairment; verbal fluency (FAR and animals); cognitive function, using the Mini Mental State Examination; visuospatial and executive functions; and clock drawing. In addition to altered motor function in PD patients, we found statistically significant differences between PD patients and controls in terms of cognitive function, verbal, executive and visuospatial functions, and attention deficits. Depression was more prevalent in the PG group.KEY WORS: depression, idiopathic Parkinson's disease, cognitive function. Avaliação da função cognitiva em doença de Parkinson idiopáticaRESUMO -A doença de Parkinson idiopática (DP) caracteriza-se pela redução da influência dopaminérgica nigroestriatal e cortical, com alterações em movimentos e posteriormente, comportamentais e cognitivas. Estudamos o comprometimento cognitivo de pacientes portadores de DP, avaliando 30 pacientes com doença de Parkinson idiopática (GP) com média de idade de 64,23 anos e os comparamos com um grupo controle (GC) de 30 pacientes. Todos os pacientes foram submetidos as seguintes avaliações: motora pela escala de UPDRS; estadiamento pela escala de Hoehn-Yahr (somente GP); depressão pela escala de Montgomery-Asberg; comprometimento da atenção; fluência verbal (FAR e animais); função cognitiva pelo Mini Exame do Estado Mental; funções visuoespaciais e executivas e desenho do relógio. Concluímos que na DP os pacientes apresentam além das alterações motoras diferenças estatisticamente significativas a nível cognitivo, na função verbal, funções executivas, visuoespaciais e distúrbios de atenção. Depressão foi mais prevalente no GP. PR -Brasil. E-mail: werneck@hc.ufpr.br Although the original description by James Parkinson 1 did not consider cognitive disturbances to be an integral part of the symptomatology of Parkinson's disease (PD), but Charcot and Vulpian 2,3 describe such disturbances for the fi rst time, and their fi ndings were confi rmed in recent studies 4,5 . Postmortem neuropathological studies and the use of in vivo PET scans show that nigrostriatal dopaminergic neuronal degeneration is the main physiopathological mechanism in Parkinson's disease 5,6 . The nigrostriatal dopaminergic system is part of one of the fi ve frontostriatal circuits 7 . Disruption of dopaminergic infl uence in these circuits has consequences for other circuits and thus explains a number of cognitive symptom...

Quantitative analysis of language production in Parkinson's disease using a cued sentence generation task

“…In the 27 abovementioned studies, PD patients engaged in conversation or described a picture which sets higher 1 demands on memory and attention than this sentence writing task. Since these cognitive functions are 2 often impaired in PD (Caballol et al, 2007;Piovezan et al, 2007), PD patients possibly simplified 3 their sentences during spontaneous speech in order to maintain sufficient memory and attentional 4 resources to complete the task. During the sentence writing task, this simplification was not necessary 5 because this design sets low demands on cognition (Small et al, 1997).…”

Cognitive impairment in parkinson’s disease

“…We would like, first of all, to thank Caixeta et al for their interest in our article 1 and for their constructive comments. We wish initially to clarify that the group of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease without depression were not using antidepressants.…”

“…We would like to comment some methodological issues that arised from the interesting paper of Piovesan et al 1 and that did not were cleared in the discussion.…”

“…To The ediTor I have read the article (case report) "Glossopharyngeal neuralgia with syncope as a sign of neck cancer recurrence" by Reinaldo Teixeira Ribeiro et al 1 , and found it extremely interesting. I would like to give a historical contribution; not regarding the rare relationship between glossopharyngeal neuralgia with syncope and neck cancer, because authors approached this very well, but in respect to the following citation in the first paragraph of the discussion: "Among the Brazilian cases of classical glossopharyngeal neuralgia previously reported…" Here, the authors missed an opportunity to include Professor Pedro Sampaio's fundamental work on this issue.…”

Perfil da fluência verbal em indivíduos com a Doença de Parkinson

“…Os aspectos cognitivos são referidos como presentes, sendo a depressão como uma ocorrência prevalente, o que pode interferir na execução cognitiva (PIOVEZAN et al, 2007;BRUNA et al, 2008).…”