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Brain & Heart

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease

dementia: Practical tips for physicians

3
2
2
Serhan Karakılıc , Nevra Oksuz *, Reza Ghouri , Asena Ayca Ozdemir , and
1
Aynur Ozge 2
1 Department of Neurology, Mersin Toros State Hospital, Mersin, Turkey
2 Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Mersin University, Mersin, Turkey
3 Department of Medical Education, School of Medicine, Mersin University, Mersin, Turkey

Abstract

Dementia is a progressive disorder that weakens the intellectual abilities and causes
the cognitive, behavioral, and functional decline in occupational and social areas.
This research is targeted to extract a profile for the dementia diagnostic and clinical
characteristics by evaluating the near-term effects of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and
Parkinson’s disease dementia (PD-D). A total of 240 individuals, including 60 AD
patients, 60 PD-D patients, and 120 healthy controls, were included in the study. Data
of individuals treated in a local dementia outpatient clinic between 2013 and 2023
were obtained from the clinic database. AD and PD-D diagnoses were made based
on the revised National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer’s Association (NIA-AA)
criteria and movement disorder society (MDS) clinical diagnostic criteria, respectively.
Functional, clinical, and neuropsychological evaluations of the patients were made by
*Corresponding author: the same neurologist. Dementia staging and daily living activities were determined
Nevra Öksüz and categorized. In the patient group, functionality and instrumental activities of
(nvrksz@gmail.com) daily living (ADLs) scores were significantly worse than those of the control group,
Citation: Karakılıc S, Oksuz N, Ghouri but there was no difference between the AD and PD-D groups. Calculation, verbal
R, Ozdemir AA, Ozge A. Alzheimer’s fluency, word list, early learning, and clock drawing test scores were lower in the AD
disease and Parkinson’s
disease dementia: Practical tips group than in the PD-D group. Apathy, disinhibition, elution, irritability, abnormal
for physicians. Brain & Heart. motor movements, sleep, and appetite scores were significantly higher in the
2024;2(1):1712. patient group than in the control group. While depression parameters were not
https://doi.org/10.36922/bh.1712
significantly different between all the groups, hallucinations and anxiety parameters
Received: August 29, 2023 were significantly higher in the PD-D group than in the AD group. As an important
Accepted: November 15, 2023 predictor of independent living and the burden of disease, functional impairment is
an important issue in patients with AD compared to those with PD-D. This study also
Published Online: November 28,
2023 highlights the neuropsychiatric perception disorder in terms of functional loss in AD
and significant anxiety disorder for PD-D accompanied by early functional losses.
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Keywords: Functional loss; Alzheimer’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; Cognitive function;
License, permitting distribution, Dementia; Anxiety
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience 1. Introduction
Publishing remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) are diseases with different
published maps and institutional
affiliations. pathophysiologic foundations. However, both diseases share many epidemiologic,

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/bh.1712