Objective: In our study, we analyzed clinical neuropsychological profiles according to severity of depressive symptoms in newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease patients.

Background: Depression is common non-motor symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Depression is not only associated with only poor quality of life, but also associated with decreased cognitive functions and motor decline.

Method: 90 newly diagnosed PD patients in Busan Paik hospital were enrolled. We divided 38 patients of depressive group and 52 patients of non-depressive group according to their geriatric depression scale by score of 18. Age, sex, education, age at onset, disease duration, Korean mini-mental status examination and Hohen and Yahr stage were analyzed by t-test. Each neuropsychological tests were analyzed with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlled by educational years. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was calculated to assess the correlation between depression scores and Z-scores of neuropsychological tests.

Results: There was no difference between depressive group and non-depressive group in age, education years, disease severity, age at onset and disease duration. The score in semantic fluency was lower in depressive group compared with non-depressive group. The depression scores were correlated with semantic fluency scores and there was a trend that depressive scores were correlated with semantic memory scores.

Conclusion: Cognitive dysfunction of patients with PD with or without dementia is related to impaired semantic fluency distinctly in several studies. Although Depressive symptoms are generally associated with executive dysfunctions, it is also recognized that depression relates to poorer semantic fluency ability. And although it is not verified that antiparkinsonian medication is an important factor to depression, we excluded medication effect because drug-naive patients were included. Our result suggests that depressive symptoms in newly diagnosed PD patients are associated with frontotemporal dysfunction, revealed by impairment in semantic fluency and semantic memory tests. More study such as neuroimaging or neuropahtologic change will be needed for depressive symptom in PD patients.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/patterns-of-neuropsychological-profiles-according-to-severity-of-depressive-symptoms-in-newly-diagnosed-parkinsons-disease-patients/