The cognitive function of patients with early Parkinson's disease: a five-year follow-up / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the changes in cognitive function in patients with early Parkinson's disease (PD) in a 5-year follow-up.Methods A total of 181 PD and 173 normal participants were recruited between January 2009 and January 2012 at the Department of Neurology,the Second Hospital of Jiaxing City.Regression analysis was used to evaluate the risk factors of cognitive impairment,and changes in subdomains of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) were compared annually with baseline data.Results Baseline clinical data were similar between the two groups.The level of cognitive impairment was positively correlated to the age of onset and the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (H AMD) (t =3.326,P＜ 0.05;t =5.211,P＜0.01),and negatively correlated to education level (t=-2.505,P＜0.05).There were no statistical differences in the first (26.5 ± 2.6),second (26.3±3.2) and third year (25.9±2.9) in the total scores of MoCA,which significantly increased in the forth (24.4 ± 2.3,P＜0.05) and fifth (24.1 ± 1.2,P＜0.05) year compared with baseline levels (26.7±2.9).However,in the control group,differences between any two years in total scores were not statistically significant (all P＞0.05).Seven subdomains of MoCA were attenuated,and four of them were significant different between the groups,including delayed recall,attention,abstraction task and orientation after the forth year of follow-up (all P ＜ 0.05).Meanwhile,visuospatial execution capacity was attenuated before the third year,and then rose markedly (P＜0.05).In the control group,the between-year differences of seven subdomains were not statistically significant (all P＞0.05).Conclusions Cognitive function of PD patients decreases significantly in some domains,such as delayed recall,attention,abstraction task and orientation after a five-year followup.