SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Parkinson’s Disease and Aging-related Movement Disorders
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1627221
This article is part of the Research TopicParkinson Disease: Current findings and challenges in diagnosing and treating motor and non-motor symptomsView all 8 articles
Cognitive Changes Preceding Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prospective Population-based Studies
Provisionally accepted
NOELIA PEÑA ARAUZO
Christoph Theyer
Florian KrismerAtbin Djamshidian
Werner PoeweCorinne Horlings
Beatrice Heim
Laura Zamarian*
Philipp Mahlknecht- Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria
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Introduction: Various non-motor symptoms have been studied as part of the prodromal phase of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, studies assessing cognitive changes are scarce. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed and SCOPUS to identify prospective, population-based studies that reported on cognitive performance in individuals without PD at baseline, the incidence of PD at follow-up, and comparisons of cognitive performance between participants who developed PD and controls. Results: Twelve studies were identified, including a total of 524,807 participants, of whom 2,939 developed PD. Four studies found differences in global cognition and a meta-analysis showed that individuals who developed PD scored 0.3 points lower than controls on the Mini-Mental State Examination at baseline. Cognitive changes were most frequently observed in tests of executive function, processing-speed and attention, and less frequently in visuospatial/visuoconstructive skills and memory. Due to the heterogeneity of the assessment methods used, it was not possible to conduct further meta-analyses. Conclusions: Cognitive changes may be part of the clinical picture in prodromal PD cohorts derived from the general population. Further population-based studies with large samples and long-term follow-up are needed to better understand their extent and significance.
Keywords: Cognition, Prodromal, Neuropsychology, Executive Function, non-motor symptoms
Received: 12 May 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 PEÑA ARAUZO, Theyer, Krismer, Djamshidian, Poewe, Horlings, Heim, Zamarian and Mahlknecht. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Laura Zamarian, laura.zamarian@i-med.ac.at
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