SAN DIEGO – The presence of paratonia in patients with Alzheimer's disease may be a sign of cognitive decline, according to the results of a small study.
“Paratonia may be useful as a way of looking at the progression of Alzheimer's disease, because it can be seen, and it's not affected by medications, depression, or how well the person is functioning,” Dr. Ipsit V. Vahia said in an interview during a poster session at the American Psychiatric Association's Institute on Psychiatric Services.
“We think it's an almost pure indicator of the rate of degeneration, which is the basic pathology in Alzheimer's disease. It may be useful clinically as a way of monitoring the progress of the disease process, not the disease manifestation,” he said.
He and his associates studied 80 consecutive patients who were evaluated at the Brooklyn Alzheimer's Disease Assistance Center at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. Their mean age was 77 years, 79% were female, and 76% were black.
Each patient underwent a battery of tests, including the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, the Blessed Dementia Scale, the Global Deterioration Scale, and the paratonia rating scale, said Dr. Vahia of the department of psychiatry at the medical center.
The investigators found that paratonia was significantly associated with the stage of illness as defined by the Global Deterioration Scale and number of frontal lobe symptoms, but not with other variables including age, race, level of education, gender, and general physical health. Paratonia was not correlated with the level of functioning in Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that the condition may serve as a marker of frontal lobe degeneration.
“We need to establish if it is a sensitive and specific clinical sign. It needs to be studied in other forms of dementia. How well it indicates brain degeneration will determine whether it is useful [as a marker] or not,” Dr. Vahia said.
The study was partly supported by a National Institute on Aging grant.