Evaluation Of Pharmacotherapy For The Patients With Depression In Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease Or Vascular Dementia

Abstract

Background: Dementia has important clinical consequences for patients with PD and their caregivers, but the incidence is unknown.

Objective: This study was designed to investigate if there are possible distinctive features that might differentiate between cognitive decline direct consequence of Idiopathic PD and that of Alzheimer’s type dementia associated with PD.

Design: This was a prospective, longitudinal cohort study.

Methods: There were six PD patients with dementia (3 male and 3 female), six matched PD patients without dementia (3 male and[1] 3 female) and six matched controls (3 male and 3 female) participated in this study. The patients were included from a large database of patients attending an out patients Parkinson clinic. All patients were treated with a combination of levodopa and variable doses of dopamine agonists but none were treated with antidepressants.

Results: The present findings showed that although patients with dementia performed worse than those without dementia on all neuropsychological tests, significant differences were found only on the semantic fluency test and Frontal assessment battery.

Conclusions: Patients with dementia were at a more advance clinical stage of Parkinson’s disease and evidenced greater functional decline in comparison with patients without dementia.