REVERSIBLE MEMORY DISTURBANCE AND INTELLIGENCE IMPAIRMENT INDUCED BY LONG-TERM ANTICHOLINERGIC THERAPY

It is controversial whether long-term anticholinergic therapy (AC-T) c an cause short-term memory disturbance, long-term memory disturbance o r intelligence impairment. Ninety patients with Parkinson's disease we re examined prospectively to clarify the existence of memory and intel ligence impairment induced by long-term AC-T, Neuropsychological tests detected eight patients with at least one of four types of deficits; intelligence impairment in four patients, verbal delayed recall impair ment in eight, verbal short-term memory disturbance in five, and verba l longterm memory disturbance in six. Two types of verbal memory distu rbance (short-term one and long-term one) appeared with double dissoci ation, suggesting that there may be an independence between the two ty pes of verbal memory system. Older patients were more prone to suffer from these reversible deficits. Moreover, all of the patients who resu med AC-T, showed recurrence of the deficits acutely. These observation s should indicate the tight relation between long-term AC-T and neurop sychological deficits.