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Because of concern about cognitive decline in many patients with Parkinson disease (PD), researchers studied the change in Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores associated with the use of drugs with anticholinergic activity (AA) in 235 community-based patients with PD. The patients completed the MMSE and a depression scale at baseline and at 4 and 8 years later, and medication use was recorded.
More than 40% of the patients were taking drugs with AA at baseline. Baseline total AA load correlated with adjusted depression scores, but not MMSE scores, at study entry. During the study, the 20 tested survivors who were not taking any AA drugs had a median decline of 1 point on the MMSE compared with a 6.5-point median decline for the 56 tes…