Antisaccades and executive dysfunction in early drug‐naive Parkinson's disease: The discovery study. Issue 6 (20th January 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Antoniades, Chrystalina A.; Demeyere, Nele; Kennard, Christopher; Humphreys, Glyn W.; Hu, Michele T.
• Is Part Of: Movement disorders. Volume 30:Issue 6(2015)
• Page Start: 843
• Page End: 847
• Publication Date: 2015-01-20
• Subjects: Movement disorders -- Periodicals; 610
• DOI: 10.1002/mds.26134
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0885-3185

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <sec id="mds26134-sec-0001" sec-type="section"> <title>Background</title> <p>Cognitive impairment is well recognized in Parkinson's disease (PD), but when it begins to develop is unclear. The aim of this study was to identify early signs of cognitive impairment along with abnormalities in saccadic behavior in newly diagnosed unmedicated PD patients.</p> </sec> <sec id="mds26134-sec-0002" sec-type="section"> <title>Methods</title> <p>Nineteen drug‐naive PD patients and 20 controls were examined using a battery of tests, including an antisaccade task, phonemic and semantic verbal fluencies, and a switching and rule finding task.</p> </sec> <sec id="mds26134-sec-0003" sec-type="section"> <title>Results</title> <p>With simple tasks, no differences were found between the two groups. However, cognitive performance of the two groups diverged with more complex tasks, occurring independently of PD‐related motor impairment. Patients exhibited higher antisaccadic error rates and switch costs in the task switching test, and performed significantly worse in the rule finding task.</p> </sec> <sec id="mds26134-sec-0004" sec-type="section"> <title>Conclusions</title> <p>Certain cognitive domains and saccadic parameters are already significantly impoverished in newly diagnosed Parkinson's patients, even before the initiation of medication. © 2015 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society</p> </sec> </abstract>