Cognitive Impairment And Emotional Disorder In Patients With Essential Tremor

Objective:To research the cognitive impairment and emotional disorder in patients with ET,and to explore the pathogenesis of essential tremor.Methods:The cognitive function was evaluated by using scales such as Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE),Aphasia Buttery of Chinese for oral-test (spontaneous speech,sequential speech,naming)and read-test(the word reading), Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure(ROF),Digit Span(DS),Similarties Tests,SymbolsDigital Test,Wisconsin Card Sorting Test,Trail Making Test A,Verbal Fluency Test and Clock Drawing Test between 40 cases and 40 healthy controls matched on age, education level and handedness.At the same time,the 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale was applied to assess the emotional state of the patients with ET to observe the occurrence of depression.Results:Compared with health controls,patients' scores for memory,executive function,generalization,visuospatial function and attention was significantly lower (p＜0.05),but there were no statistically signicant difference in language,reasoning and concept formation between the two groups(p＞0.05),and there was no evidence of association of the cognitive function scores with the intensity and duration of tremor in patients with ET.Depression state was observed in 52.5 percent of patients with ET, of which the 71.4%suffered from mild depression associated significantly with the age(x~2=27.034,p=0.000)and was observed more frequently in the patients under the age of 50.We found no evidence for an association of the cognitive impairment and emotional disorder in patients with ET(p＞0.05) Conclusions:The patients with ET have a multiple-domain cognitive deficit, with executive function,attention and memory impaired most seriouly,which show that the frontal lobe may be involved in the pathogenesis of ET.It is also suggested that depression-related neural mechanisms may be involved in the pathogenesis of ET due to more than half of patients with ET sufferd from depression.