A Norwegian study published earlier this year in Movement Disorders surveyed 72 patients living with Parkinson's disease, with no dementia. However, more than half the patients exhibited signs of mild cognitive impairment.
Four years later they brought most of the group back and examined them. They found that 62 percent of the patients had progressed to dementia. Only 20 percent of the patients not diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment had dementia. One exception the researchers found was people who had previously had the memory disorder amnesia, a form of mild cognitive impairment, did not tend to develop dementia.
Not everyone diagnosed at the beginning of the study developed dementia. There is no sure way to tell who will develop dementia. It only gives a general idea of one possible predictor of dementia.
A previous study published in the Neurology in 2000, found that dementia developed more frequently in people with Parkinson's disease who were older and had more severe neurological symptoms.
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