Cognitive Dysfunctions in Mild Parkinson’s Disease Dementia: Comparison with Patients Having Mild Alzheimer’s Disease and Normal Controls

Vol. 59, No. 1-2, 2008

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Original Paper

Cognitive Dysfunctions in Mild Parkinson's Disease Dementia: Comparison with Patients Having Mild Alzheimer's Disease and Normal Controls
In-Uk Song^a, Joong-Seok Kim^a, Ji-Yeon Yoo^a, Hyun-Joo Song^b, Kwang-Soo Lee^a

^aDepartment of Neurology, The Catholic University of Korea, and
^bSeoul Women's University Graduate School of Professional Therapeutic Technology, Seoul, Korea

Address of Corresponding Author

Eur Neurol 2008;59:49-54 (DOI: 10.1159/000109261)

Key Words

Parkinson's disease dementia
Alzheimer's disease
Cognition
Mild dementia

Abstract

Objective: Although the neuropsychological differences between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD) have been scrutinized in several studies, no study to date has directly compared the cognitive impairment profiles of patients with mild PDD and those with mild AD. In this study, we investigated the cognitive changes of mild PDD patients as compared with age- and education-matched normal controls and matched mild AD patients. Methods: Thirty-one patients with PDD, 24 patients with probable AD (pAD), and 50 controls were recruited prospectively. All the subjects were evaluated with a battery of detailed neuropsychological tests for the assessment of attention, memory, language, and the visuospatial and frontal executive functions. Results: The PDD and pAD groups demonstrated significant impairments in all cognitive domains compared with the control group. These cognitive declines attributable to dementia were similar in the PDD and pAD patients, but they were not identical. In the subdomain analysis, the pAD group demonstrated more marked changes in delayed memory performance than did the PDD group. Conclusions: Our result showed that the cognitive changes in mild PDD patients did not differ from those in the mild pAD patients, except for delayed memory items. We concluded that it is difficult to sharply distinguish between mild PDD and mild AD.

Author Contacts

Dr. Kwang-Soo Lee
Department of Neurology, Kangnam St. Mary's Hospital
505, Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu
Seoul 137-701 (South Korea)
Tel. +82 2 590 2091, Fax +82 2 599 9686, E-Mail ks1007@catholic.ac.kr

Article Information

Received: November 8, 2006
Accepted: April 19, 2007
Published online: October 4, 2007
Number of Print Pages : 6
Number of Figures : 0, Number of Tables : 4, Number of References : 27

Medline Abstract (ID 17917458)

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