Objective: To compare the cognitive and Amyloid-beta 1-42 profile of non-demented Parkinson’s disease patients (PD) reporting subjective cognitive decline (SCD) with or without concerns regarding this self-experienced symptom.

Background: In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) presence of SCD increases the risk of cognitive worsening and dementia. Moreover, memory complaints predict abnormal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for AD.

Methods: Of 185 PD patients included in the “Amyloid-beta in CSF as risk factor for cognitive dysfunction in PD (ABC-PD)” study, 73 (39.5%) had no SCD and 55 (29.7%) were classified as having SCD according to the following criteria: subjectively increasing difficulties in everyday memory for at least six months with a gradual decline in the context of established PD (>1 year after PD onset). Of all 55 SCD patients, 31 (56.4%) reported no concerns and 24 (43.6%) concerns about this self-experienced cognitive decline. Analysis of cognitive test results were based on age, sex and education corrected domain scores. Non-parametric tests were applied for between group analysis without covariates and binary logistic regression models to correct for confounders.

Results: SCD patients were older (p<0.01) with a higher age at PD onset (p=0.04) and higher Beck Depression Inventory scores (BDI, p<0.001) compared to non SCD-PD. In contrast SCD patients with memory concerns had a tendency to be younger (p=0.05) and had higher BDI scores than those with no concerns. Further data analyses were corrected for these confounders. 52.7% of PD patients with SCD had mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) compared to only 26% with no SCD (p<0.01). The frequency of PD-MCI did not vary between SCD patients with and without concerns. Patients with SCD had lower performance in attention (p=0.02), executive (p=0.02) and memory tests (p=0.01) than patients with no SCD. SCD patients with concerns showed better test performance in the language domain (p=0.03) than SCD patients with no concerns about their memory performance. No group differences in the CSF Amyloid-beta 1-42 and activity of daily living profile could be detected.

Conclusions: Cognitive performance but not the AD biomarker profile differed between PD patients with and without SCD, although severity of cognitive impairment did not differed between SCD patients with and without concerns.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/cognition-and-amyloid-biomarker-status-in-non-demented-patients-with-parkinsons-disease-patients-pd-with-or-without-subjective-cognitive-decline-scd/