Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and Caregiver Stress in Parkinson's Disease with Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer's Disease, and Frontotemporal Dementia

Yu Tzu Chang, Chi Wei Huang, Hsin I. Chang, Shih Wei Hsu, Chen Chang Lee, Shu Hua Huang, Pei Ning Wang, Chiung Chih Chang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: A better understanding of factors associated with caregiver burden might facilitate the construction of coping strategies to improve their clinical outcomes and the comprehensive care model for dementia. Objective: To investigate the cognitive and neuropsychiatric domains that contribute to caregiver burden in three types of neurodegenerative disorders: Parkinson's disease (PD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), and frontotemporal disease (FTD). Methods: Eight hundred and fourteen patients and their caregivers were invited to participate; among them, 235 had PD with cognitive impairment; 429 had AD, and 150 had FTD. The evaluation protocol included the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Chinese Version Verbal Learning Test, the modified Trail Making Test B, semantic fluency, and a geriatric depression score. Statistical comparisons of the cognitive tests, NPI total scores, and caregiver burden among the three diagnosed types of dementia, matched for a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) of 0.5 or 1, were performed, and multivariate linear regression models were used to evaluate the parameter significance. Results: Caregivers for patients with PD and FTD showed significant burden increments when the CDR scores changes from 0.5 to 1. For CDR = 0.5, the PD group had significantly lower caregiver burdens than the AD group, but the NPI total scores were significantly higher. Factors related to caregiver burden were the presence of delusion among all diagnosis groups, while the impact of NPI total scores related to caregiver burden was the highest in FTD, followed by AD and PD. Conclusions: At the mild to moderate stages, our results suggested different degrees of significance in terms of the cognitive test scores or NPI subdomains for predicting caregiver stress among the three types of dementia.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)243-254
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Parkinson's Disease
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023

Keywords

  • Alzheimer's disease
  • Parkinson's disease
  • caregiver stress
  • frontotemporal disease
  • neuropsychiatric inventory

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