Study on characteristics of transcranial sonography in Parkinson disease with dementia

Objective To investigate the characteristics of Transcranial Sonography(TCS)in Parkinson disease patients with or without dementia.Methods One hundred sixty-three subjects including 58 PDD,64 n-PDD,and 41 controls were recruited in the study.Transcranial ultrasound was used to detect the echo of substantia nigra and the width of third ventricle.The status of PD patients was evaluated using minimum mental state examination,Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale,Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale Part 3,Non-Sports Symptom Questionnaire and Hoehn-Yahr Staging.A statistical analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between substantia nigra(SN)echo,third ventricle(TV)width,and cognitive function(MMSE,MoCA).Results The TV width and SN + rate of PDD group were significantly higher than those of n-PDD group and control group [TV width were(7.2±0.4),(5.8±1.0),(5.8±1.1),F=43.48,P<0.001;SN + rate were(87.93%,85.94%,9.76%),X^2=83.251,P<0.001].Patients with PDD were further divided into SN + group and SN-group according to TCS result.Age(t=2.16,P=0.0352),Hoehn-Yahr stage(X^2=7.628,P=0.0057),NMSQ score(t=2.37,P=0.0214)were significantly higher in SN + group than in SN-group.There was no significant correlation between the width of the third ventricle and clinical features(P>0.05).Positive echogenicity of SN was positively correlated with HY stage(r=0.249,P=0.010),UPDRS-Ⅲ(r=0.279,P=0.004),NMSQ(r=0.242,P=0.013),but not with age,gender and disease duration.There was no significant correlation between MMSE and MoCA(P>0.05).Conclusion Measurement of third ventricle width with TCS is helpful for identifying whether PD patients are accompanied by dementia and predicting whether PD patients progress to PDD.