Mild Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson's Disease: Clustering and Switching Analyses in Verbal Fluency Test

Mild cognitive impairment is common in non-demented Parkinson disease patients (PD-MCI) and is considered as a risk factor for dementia. Executive dysfunction has been widely described in PD and the Verbal Fluency Tests (VFT) are often used for executive function assessment in this pathology. The Movement Disorder Society (MDS) published guidelines for PD-MCI diagnosis in 2012. However, no investigation has focused on the qualitative analysis of VFT in PD-MCI. The aim of this work was to study the clustering and switching strategies in VFT in PD-MCI patients. Moreover, these variables are considered as predictors for PD-MCI diagnosis.

Forty-three PD patients and twenty normal controls were evaluated with a neuropsychological protocol and the MDS criteria for PD-MCI were applied. Clustering and switching analysis were conducted for VFT.

The percentage of patients diagnosed with PD-MCI was 37.2%. The Mann-Whitney U test analysis showed that PD-MCI performed poorly in different cognitive measures (digit span, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, judgment of line orientation, and comprehension test), compared to PD patients without mild cognitive impairment (PD-nMCI). Phonemic fluency analyses showed that PD-MCI patients produced fewer words and switched significantly less, compared to controls and PD-nMCI. Concerning semantic fluency, the PD-MCI group differed significantly, compared to controls and PD-nMCI, in switches. Discriminant function analyses and logistic regression analyses revealed that switches predicted PD-MCI.

PD-MCI patients showed poor performance in VFT related to the deficient use of production strategies. The number of switches is a useful predictor for incident PD-MCI. (JINS, 2017, 23, 511-520).