Objective: To determine the prevalence of neurobehavioral disturbances and their relationship to gait and cognitive impairment in DLB.

Background: The recent literature has conceptualized that anxiety has a direct negative effect on balance in the elderly. This cross sectional study is to ascertain whether there is a similar correlation between neurobehavioral symptoms and gait.

Methods: We studied 73 patients who came for initial evaluation at our memory clinic and had been diagnosed as probable DLB. We collected the date from the notes at the initial visit: visual hallucinations (77%), anti-depressant therapy (40%), anxiety (29%) and Gait disturbance or parkinsonism (85%), Tremor (50%), History of falls (47%), and orthostatic hypotension (22%). We assessed the correlation between these symptoms and also cognitive deficit.

Results: The mean age at initial visit was 73.2+/- 7.3 with the disease duration of 3.6+/-2.4. The mean MOCA score at initial visit was 15.5 +/- 5.7. The patients with anxiety symptoms reported more falls (ρ = .0330, p=.005). However, we did not find any correlation between falls and treatment with antidepressants. There was statistically significant association between gait disturbance and both visual hallucinations (ρ= .0402, p=.000) and orthostatic hypotension (ρ = – 0.0342, p=.005). There was no significant correlation between MoCA variables and non-motor symptoms. There was a weak correlation between current treatment with anti-depressant and better delayed free recall. There was a statistically significant but clinically weak inverse correlation between anxiety symptoms and delayed cued recall. There was no significant correlation between MOCA variables and falls.

Conclusions: Our findings emphasize that there is a direct correlation between anxiety and falls. That was similar to report from studies of cognitively intact elderly, which noted as people who are anxious, do less, and that leads to deconditioning and increased risk of falls. The direct correlation between visual hallucinations and gait disturbance suggests that visual hallucinations contributes to patients disability through its influences on locomotion. We also hypothesized that the presence of comorbid anxiety may, in part, account for the worse performance in delayed cued recall and overall contribute to the variability in memory performance among patients with DLB.

« Back to 2016 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/correlation-between-neuro-behavioral-symptoms-cognition-and-gait-in-patients-with-dementia-with-lewy-bodies-dlb/