Neuropathology in Parkinson’s disease with mild cognitive impairment

Excerpt

In a recent paper, Adler et al. [1] reported the neuropathologic findings in eight cases of Parkinson disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MC) (6 males, 2 females, mean age 82.8 years, mean PD duration 11.4 years). Four patients each had amnestic MCI memory only, three non-amnestic MCI with frontal executive and one with frontal executive and visuospatial dysfunctions. Using the Unified Lewy Body Staging System (ULBSS [2]), three cases each were brainstem-predominant (stage IIa), and brainstem–limbic predominant (stage III), and two neocortical LB stage (stage IV), while two PD cases with non-amnestic and one with amnestic MCI showed additional multiple brain infarcts. These data suggested a heterogenous neuropathology of PD-MCI, as found in Parkinson disease dementia (PDD). Unfortunately, no assessment of diffuse (amyloid) plaques and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) was performed, the impact of which on cognitive dysfunction in Lewy body diseases (LBDs) has been shown [7, 8]. …