Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease dementia: Practical tips for physicians

Abstract

Dementia is a progressive disorder that weakens the intellectual abilities and causes the cognitive, behavioral, and functional decline in occupational and social areas. This research is targeted to extract a profile for the dementia diagnostic and clinical characteristics by evaluating the near-term effects of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease dementia (PD-D). A total of 240 individuals, including 60 AD patients, 60 PD-D patients, and 120 healthy controls, were included in the study. Data of individuals treated in a local dementia outpatient clinic between 2013 and 2023 were obtained from the clinic database. AD and PD-D diagnoses were made based on the revised National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer’s Association (NIA-AA) criteria and movement disorder society (MDS) clinical diagnostic criteria, respectively. Functional, clinical, and neuropsychological evaluations of the patients were made by the same neurologist. Dementia staging and daily living activities were determined and categorized. In the patient group, functionality and instrumental activities of daily living (ADLs) scores were significantly worse than those of the control group, but there was no difference between the AD and PD-D groups. Calculation, verbal fluency, word list, early learning, and clock drawing test scores were lower in the AD group than in the PD-D group. Apathy, disinhibition, elution, irritability, abnormal motor movements, sleep, and appetite scores were significantly higher in the patient group than in the control group. While depression parameters were not significantly different between all the groups, hallucinations and anxiety parameters were significantly higher in the PD-D group than in the AD group. As an important predictor of independent living and the burden of disease, functional impairment is an important issue in patients with AD compared to those with PD-D. This study also highlights the neuropsychiatric perception disorder in terms of functional loss in AD and significant anxiety disorder for PD-D accompanied by early functional losses.