Mental arithmetic impairment and its influencing factors in patients with early Parkinson's disease / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To detect the changes in mental arithmetic competence and the related influencing factors in patients with early Parkinson's disease(PD)by using mental arithmetic task behavioral experiment.Methods:Thirty-one patients with early PD and 40 healthy controls were enrolled in this study.The cognitive functions were tested by mini-mental state examination(MMSE)and Montreal cognitive assessment(MoCA). The differences of mental arithmetic competence between the two groups were measured by behavioral experiment.Results:There was no significant difference in correct rate, reaction time and post-corrected reaction time while performing baseline tasks and easy mental arithmetic tasks between the two groups( P>0.05). The reaction time had no significant difference between the two groups after adjusting some confounding factors( P>0.05). However, the correct rate while performing difficult mental arithmetic tasks was significantly lower( t=-2.232, P=0.029)and the reaction time was significantly longer( t=2.149, P=0.035)in PD group than in the controls, and the significant difference in reaction time persisted even after adjusting some confounding factors( t=3.139, P=0.003). In PD group, the correct rate of difficult mental arithmetic tasks was positively associated with MoCA scores( r=0.561, P=0.004), and negatively associated with age( r=-0.532, P=0.008). The reaction time and post-corrected reaction time while performing difficult metal arithmetic task were negatively associated with MoCA scores( r=-0.525, P=0.01; r=-0.554, P=0.005)and positively associated with age( r=0.485, P=0.037; r=0.514, P=0.012)in PD group. Conclusions:The difficult mental arithmetic competence is impaired in early PD patients, which is statistically significantly correlated with cognitive function and age.