Education and cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease: a study of 102 patients

Objective - To understand the correlation between low education level (EL) and the cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD). Patients ann meth ods - This is a cross-sectional study of cognitive function in 102 non-deme nted PD patients, from a special clinic (behavioral neurology) in a referra l medical center. PD patients were divided into low, middle and high EL gro ups. We used the Chinese version of the Cognitive Ability Screening Instrum ent as a neuropsychological test, which covers nine domains of cognitive fu nction. A full score is 100. When determining the abnormality rate of each item of CASI, we used age/education stratified normal control groups as ref erence to obliterate the influence of education and age on cognitive declin e. Results - Recent memory, language and attention are the three items in w hich there were differences between the groups, in terms of abnormal perfor mance rates. The high EL group is at less risk of recent memory impairment, but at more risk of impairment in language and attention. The other six it ems and total score showed no differences among the groups. Thirty-eight pe rcent of the patients had a total score below 1.5 SD of the means of the ge neral population. Conclusion - This study shows that high EL exerts no prot ective effect on the cognitive decline in PD patients in general, except in recent memory. The rate of cognitive dysfunction in PD patients is high. T his deserves more attention.