Dementia in Parkinson's disease: diffusion tensor imaging.
OBJECTIVE
Dementia occurs frequently in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the nature of the dementing process remains controversial. We evaluated various cognitive functions in patients with PD, compared fractional anisotropy (FA) values between PD patients with and without dementia.


METHODS
Thirty-seven consecutive patients with Hoehn-Yahr stage III or IV PD participated in this study. Patients were divided into two groups: (i) PD with dementia group (PDD) and (ii) PD without dementia group (PDND). There were 11 PDD and 26 PDND cases. Ten controls were also studied.


RESULTS
The PDD group showed significant FA reduction in the bilateral posterior cingulate bundles compared with PDND. FA values in the left posterior cingulate bundle showed significant correlations with many cognitive parameters.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results showed that the posterior cingulate areas play some important roles in the dementing process in PDD. However, as the pathological processes responsible for dementia in PD patients may be multifaceted, further studies are necessary.
Matsui
H
H
Department of Neurology, Sumitomo Hospital, Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan. hide0729@kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Nishinaka
K
K
Oda
M
M
Niikawa
H
H
Kubori
T
T
Udaka
F
F
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016880:Anisotropy; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003704:Dementia / Q000209:etiology* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*