Neuropsychological abnormalities in first degree relatives of patients with familial Parkinson's disease

Objective-To investigate the cognitive profile of first degree relatives of patients with familial Parkinson's disease to determine whether these subj ects presented signs of neuropsychological dysfunction compared with health y controls. Results of recent genetic and neuroimaging studies suggest a ge netic contribution to the aetiology of Parkinson's disease and underline th e interest in identifying preclinical signs of the disease. Methods-A battery of tests evaluating executive function was administered t o 41 first degree relatives of patients with well documented familial Parki nson's disease and 39 healthy controls. A factorial discriminant analysis a llowed isolation of a subgroup of 15 first degree relatives who could be co nsidered as impaired compared with the healthy controls. Among these 15 "de viant" relatives, nine performed globally worse than the control subjects o n all tasks. The six other subjects had mean or even high scores on all tas k variables, except on those highly correlated with the discriminant score of the factorial discriminant analysis. Results and conclusion-Among the first degree relatives of patients with fa milial Parkinson's disease, some manifested executive dysfunction comparabl e with that typically associated with the disease. Such impairment could re present a preclinical form of Parkinson's disease.