AUTHOR=Huang Juan , Wang Hui , Chen Lin , Hu Binbin , Qin Xin , Yang Qiushuang , Cui Yajing , Chen Shenjian , Huang Wei 

TITLE=Capturing subjective cognitive decline with a new combined index in low education patients with Parkinson’s disease

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2024.1403105

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2024.1403105

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=Objectives: Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) refers to self-reported cognitive decline with normal global cognition. This study aimed to capture SCD among low educated patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using a newly established indicator. Methods: We recruited 64 PD patients with low education levels (education  12 years) for the study. The presence of SCD was determined based on a Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale Part I (1.1) score  1. Spearman analysis and multivariate binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate factors associated with the PD-SCD group. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the new combined index. Results: The prevalence of SCD in PD patients was 43.75%. Low educated PD-SCD patients had higher scores on the Non-Motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS), Parkinson's Fatigue Scale (PFS), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), as well as higher scores on the UPDRS-I and UPDRS-II, compared to PD patients without SCD. They also demonstrated poorer performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), particularly in the domains of executive abilities/ attention/language. Multivariate binary regression confirmed the significant association between PD-SCD and MoCA-executive abilities/attention/language. Based on these findings, a combined index was established by summing the scores of MoCA-executive abilities, MoCA-attention, and MoCA-language. ROC analysis showed that the combined index could differentiate PD-SCD patients with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.876. A score of 12 or less on the combined index had a sensitivity of 73.9% and a specificity of 76.2% for diagnosing PD-SCD. Conclusions: These low education patients with PD-SCD may exhibit potential PD-related pathological changes. It is important for clinicians to identify PD-SCD patients as early as possible. The newly combined index can help capture these low educated PD-SCD patients, with an AUC of 0.867, and is expected to assist clinicians in earlier identification and better management of PD patients.