Cognitive and mood disorders in elderly patients with Parkinson's disease

The risk of developing cognitive and mood disorders in 71 old aged patients (65 years and older) with Parkinson's disease (PD), who came consecutively to our center of Parkinson's and extrapyramidal diseases, has been evaluat ed in this study. The odds ratio (confidence interval: 95%) for the risk of the cognitive disorder was 15.39 (4.063-58.148) with p <0.0001, and for th e risk of mood disorder was 4.227 (1.652-10.794) with p <0.025. These obser vations indicate a higher risk of cognitive and mood disorders in the old P D patients, compared to the age- and sex- matched controls. The two conditi ons are often associated, but the patients with mood disorder showed lower mini mental state examination (MMSE) mean score (22.2 +/-5.6) compared to p atients without mood disorder (24.4 +/-4.1), p <0.05. We can suppose that t he symptoms of depression play an important role in determining reduced neu ropsychological performances in PD.