Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and Parkinson Disease

Abstract

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) include apathy, emotional dysregulation, impulse control disorders, social inappropriateness, and abnormal perception or thought content. 1 Such symptoms are common and affect quality of life and caregiver burden in people living with Parkinson disease (PD). 2 In this issue of Neurology ® , Lee et al. 3 publish a study in which they examined which profile of NPS is associated with the risk of cognitive decline in a large clinic-based cohort of patients with PD with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI). This single-center retrospective study involved 338 consecutive outpatients with PD-MCI seen at Severance Hospital, Seoul, South Korea, from January 2008 to July 2019. PD was diagnosed according to standard clinical diagnostic criteria, but to improve the diagnostic accuracy of the disease, all patients were confirmed as having dopaminergic depletion in the posterior putamen on 18F-N-fluoropropyl-2b-carbomethoxy-3b-(4-iodophenyl) nortropane (FP-CIT) PET. They all underwent complete neuropsychological testing using the Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery and completed the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) questionnaire.