- New research suggests that people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease who have hallucinations early on face a greater risk of rapid cognitive decline.
- However, minor hallucinations often go underreported and ignored by Parkinson’s disease patients and clinicians.
- European experts ran a long-term study that tied Parkinson’s disease and early hallucinations to “a stronger decline in frontal-subcortical functions.”
- Experts encourage anyone with Parkinson’s disease who has hallucinations to inform their healthcare provider promptly.
Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative diseases are often far advanced before diagnosis. This severely limits prevention and treatment options.
Parkinson’s disease has long been regarded primarily as a movement disorder. However, growing research points to impaired executive function as a major factor in its progression.
European researchers may have found a novel way to determine the early onset of Parkinson’s disease and related cognitive decline by observing cognitive and psychiatric symptoms.
Experts at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Switzerland and Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, Spain found that people with Parkinson’s disease and early hallucinations may lose executive function more rapidly.
Their study appears in
Hallucinations are false sensations of things that are not actually present. People with Parkinson’s disease may experience one or several types of hallucinations involving, sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste.
Scientists already understand that complex visual hallucinations can be a marker of cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease and related neurological conditions.
However, these kinds of hallucinations tend to occur at a later stage of the disorder, which rules out using them as early Parkinson’s disease markers.
Minor hallucinations happen in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, but current research has not yet confirmed their relationship…
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