Evaluation of the mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease

Objective: To discuss the sensitivity and feasibility of Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA) and Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE) in evaluating the mild cognitive impairment(MCI) of patients with Parkinson's disease(PD).Methods: Sixty PD patients and 30 control patients were evaluated using the MoCA and MMSE.Results: The difference of evaluation result of MoCA and MMSE between the PD group and control group was statistically significant(P<0.05).The scores of MoCA and MMSE in patients with light,medium and severe score of UPDRS were significantly lower than those in control group,and the more severe the disease was,the lower the scores of MoCA and MMSE were(P<0.01).The scores of MoCA and MMSE in patients with satge 1 to 5 of Hoehn-Yahr staging were significantly lower than that in control group(P<0.01);and the differences of the scores of MoCA and MMSE in patients with satge 1 to 5 were statistically significant(P<0.01).The MoCA scores of the space/executive function,abstract ability and memory in PD group were significantly lower than those in control group.Conclusions: The application of MoCA combined with MMSE can be beneficial for early finding the MCI in PD patients,and the sensitivity of MoCA in space/executive function,abstract ability and memory are better than that of MMSE.MoCA can provide the basis in early finding and nonivasive screening the PD patients with mild cognitive impairment.