Bogaards, Femke (2023) Sex Differences in Cognitive Decline of De Novo Parkinson's Disease Patients: A Longitudinal Study. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common progressive neurodegenerative disorders affecting elderly people. Cognitive impairment is an evident non-motor symptom (NMS) of PD and is often already present at early stages of the disease. Despite research on cognitive functioning of PD men and PD women, little is known about sex differences in cognitive decline of de novo PD patients and PD patients, therefore, replication of earlier studies is needed. The goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of sex differences in cognitive decline of de novo PD patients. Therefore, we compared cognitive functioning between de novo PD men and women and Healthy Control (HC) men and women. In addition, we looked at cognitive decline over time in PD patients, comparing men and women. Cognitive functioning of PD patients (n = 93, 73.1% male) was compared to HC participants (n = 126, 49.2% male). An extensive neuropsychological test battery was conducted in which all cognitive domains were included. Results show that de novo PD patients performed worse on all cognitive domains than HCs. Similar to sex differences found in HCs, within de novo PD patients, men have worse cognitive functioning on all cognitive domains compared to women. In early PD, in contrast to HCs, visuospatial functioning in men seems to be worse than women. It can be concluded that there are no sex differences in cognitive decline in de novo PD patients over a timeframe of three years. Future research could include an extended period of time and could take level of education into account as a variable to determine cognitive decline between men and women with de novo PD.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Supervisor name: | Zee, S. van der and Slomp, A.C. and Spikman, J.M. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Clinical Neuropsychology (CN) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Aug 2023 12:36 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2023 12:36 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/2702 |
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