Office-based screen predicts dementia in Parkinson’s disease

March 26, 2018|Internal Medicine News

FROM JAMA NEUROLOGY

A simple, office-based screening tool was at least as effective as biomarker-based assessments in predicting which patients with Parkinson’s disease are likely to develop dementia in an international study.

The eight-item scale “is a short and easily-administered office tool that despite its simplicity can nonetheless accurately screen for dementia risk in Parkinson’s disease,” investigators noted in reporting the results of an international multicenter study in 607 patients with Parkinson’s disease but free of dementia at baseline. The results of the study, testing the predictive validity of the Montreal Parkinson’s Risk of Dementia Scale, were published online in JAMA Neurology.

After a mean follow-up of 4.4 years, 11.5% of the study cohort developed dementia. Those who were stratified by the scale as having a low risk of dementia had an annual risk of 0.6%. Those in the intermediate-risk group had a 5.8% annual risk of developing dementia, and those in the high-risk group had a 14.9% annual risk.

Compared with patients in the low-risk group, those in the high-risk group had a 20-fold higher risk of dementia, and those in the intermediate risk group had a 10-fold higher risk (P less than 0.001).