Neuropsychiatric disorders in early untreated Parkinson’s disease
- Professor Sergio E Starkstein, Fremantle Hospital, Education Building T-7, Fremantle 6969, Australia; ses{at}meddent.uwa.edu.au
- Received 22 February 2009
- Revised 22 February 2009
- Accepted 5 March 2009
Psychiatric disorders and cognitive deficits are frequent comorbid conditions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and may become evident early in the illness. While antiparkinsonian treatment is clearly related to some psychiatric symptoms (eg, hallucinations), its relationship to other common problems in PD such as depression, anxiety and cognitive deficits has not been adequately examined.
In this issue, Aarsland and colleagues1 assessed the frequency of neuropsychiatric disorders in an incident cohort of 175 drug naïve PD patients and 166 age and gender comparable healthy controls (see page 928). The main finding was that depression, apathy, anxiety and sleep disturbances were significantly more frequent in the PD sample than in …
