Comparison of the clinical and neuroimaging characteristics of patients with and without dementia in an untreated neurocysticercosis population
| Variable | Patients with dementia (n = 14) | Patients without dementia (n = 68) | OR (95% CI) | p value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the case of numerical variables, the data are expressed in terms of medians and extreme values, given the abnormal distribution according to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. | ||||
| Patients with delirium (n = 8) were excluded from this analysis because it would have introduced a considerable heterogeneity into the group of patients without dementia. | ||||
| *The sample size of the non-demented group for these four variables is only 64 (four patients from this group showed clinically significant intracranial hypertension and thus were not considered for lumbar puncture). | ||||
| †Mann–Whitney test, ‡Pearson’s χ2 test, ¶Fisher’s exact test. | ||||
| Age in years, median (range) | 63 (27–69) | 33 (17–69) | – | 0.001† |
| Education level in years, median (range) | 2 (0–12) | 9 (0–16) | – | 0.007† |
| Male sex | 8 (57%) | 34 (50%) | 1.3 (0.4 to 4.2) | 0.626‡ |
| Presence of epilepsy | 12 (85%) | 40 (58%) | 4.2 (0.8 to 20.2) | 0.057‡ |
| Presence of active neurocysticercosis | 12 (85%) | 52 (76%) | 1.8 (0.3 to 9.1) | 0.724‡ |
| No of parasitic lesions, median (range) | 36 (3–43) | 3 (0–85) | – | <0.001† |
| Frontal | 12 (85%) | 32 (47%) | 6.7 (1.4 to 32.4) | 0.008‡ |
| Temporal | 12 (85%) | 34 (50%) | 6 (1.2 to 28.8) | 0.014‡ |
| Parietal | 12 (85%) | 28 (41%) | 8.5 (1.7 to 41.3) | 0.002‡ |
| Occipital | 8 (57%) | 18 (26%) | 3.7 (1.1 to 12.1) | 0.054¶ |
| Presence of vascular lesions (stroke) | 2 (14%) | 2 (2%) | 5.5 (0.7 to 42.9) | 0.073¶ |
| Presence of Cysticercus racemosus | 0 (0%) | 14 (20%) | 0.79 (0.70 to 0.89) | 0.113¶ |
| Presence of arachnoiditis | 4 (28%) | 16 (23%) | 1.3 (0.35 to 4.71) | 0.736¶ |
| Intracranial pressure* | 140 (90–170) | 145 (50–290) | – | 0.961† |
| Cerebrospinal fluid variables, median (range) | ||||
| Proteins* | 32 (23–123) | 34 (12–105) | – | 0.349† |
| Cells* | 9 (0–521) | 9 (.346) | – | 0.346† |
| Glucose* | 54 (45–65) | 51 (13–118) | – | 0.226† |