United States: A new study at the University of Pennsylvania looked at 389 people with Parkinson’s disease, who were about 69 years old on average. They had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s around six years before joining the study.
As reported by HealthDay, over 10 years, about 27% of these people developed dementia. In another study, about 9% of Parkinson’s patients worldwide developed dementia in the same time. The total risk of dementia increased with increasing age, being male, and having less education. However, the study mostly involved well-educated white people, so the results might not apply to everyone.
Factors Affecting Dementia Risk
As reported by HealthDay, “These results provide more hopeful estimates of the long-term risk of dementia for people with Parkinson’s disease, suggesting that there is a longer window to intervene to prevent or delay cognitive decline,” said study lead author Dr. Daniel Weintraub who is, of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in Philadelphia.
Research Insights and Future Directions
As Weintraub noted in the journal news release, however the development of the dementia is feared by the people with Parkinson’s and the combination of both a movement disorder and cognitive disorder can be devastating to them and to their loved ones as well.”
Prior to the studies had suggested almost 80 percent of the Parkinson’s patients might develop dementia within 15 to 20 years of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
“While these studies were important in highlighting the issue of cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease, the studies were conducted many years ago, were relatively small nd had other limitations, so we wanted to re-evaluate these findings,” noted Weintraub, an assistant professor of psychiatry at UPenn.
Honestly to get the clear picture of the incidence of dementia among the Parkinson’s patients in Weintraub’s team analysed the data from the two large prospective studies.
There is one study which involves 417 people was international and the participants averaged almost 62 years of the age and were newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s as they entered the study and had not yet begun the treatment at the study’s inception.