Abstract / Summary
Background: Cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease (PD) significantly affects patients ability to perform instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). However, neuropsychiatric symptoms, which are highly prevalent in PD, may also contribute to functional impairments. In this study, we investigated the independent contributions of cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms to functional impairments and tested whether mood mediates cognition-function associations. Methods: We examined 104 patients from the Quebec Parkinson Network and replicated analyses in a sample of 144 patients from an independent online cohort. Participants completed the Penn Parkinsons Daily Activities Questionnaire (PDAQ), a validated patient-reported measure designed to capture cognition-dependent IADLs, standard cognitive tests (executive function, attention, working memory), and neuropsychiatric questionnaires (apathy, depression, impulsivity, and anhedonia). Regression models tested the independent and combined effects of cognition and neuropsychiatric symptoms on PDAQ; mediation analyses explored mechanistic pathways. Results: Both cognitive performance and neuropsychiatric symptoms were independently associated with PDAQ scores and the proportion of variance explained by neuropsychiatric symptoms was comparable to that explained by cognitive performance. Furthermore, depression and impulsivity partially confounded the relationship between cognitive performance and PDAQ and impulsivity partially mediated this relationship. The independent associations between neuropsychiatric symptoms and PDAQ were replicated in the replication sample. Conclusion: These results indicate that impairments in cognitive IADLs reflect contributions of both cognition and neuropsychiatric changes and suggest that trials using measures of IADLs as an outcome measure should also carefully assess and control for neuropsychiatric symptoms.