In the April issue of the journal Movement Disorders a group of French researchers reported on their study of the emotional symptom, apathy, in Parkinson's disease. They set out to "determine whether specific apathy profiles may be identified in PD."
The researchers enrolled 159 patients and compared them with 58 people who did not have Parkinson's disease, or controls. They administered an hour-long test to the Parkinson's disease patients and the controls that measured apathy, cognitive function and depression. From the tests they identified 51 patients (32.1%) of the PD patients that tested positive for apathy. Only one of the control patients tested positive for apathy. However, the aim was to profile apathy in Parkinson's disease, so the analysis dug a little deeper.
The researchers tested the patients for four different types of apathy:
- Action initiation (Example: Do you care whether you get dressed or mow the lawn today?)
- Emotion (Example: Do you care about engaging your emotions with your spouses feelings?)
- Intellectual curiosity (Example: Do you care about learning something by watching the History Channel?)
- Self-awareness (Example: Do you care if your clothes are clean and neat?)
- People with Parkinson's who tested positive for apathy tended to be more apathetic about intellectual curiosity than the other three measures of apathy.
- In patients where dementia was present, they were quite apathetic about action initiation, intellectual curiosity, and self-awareness. However, they were not as apathetic about emotions.
- Patients with Parkinson's-related apathy did not tend to be more depressed than those who did not experience apathy. In other words, depression and apathy do not go hand in hand.
At the end of the article, the authors pointed out that stimulant methylphenidate (brand name Ritalin) helps people with apathy. The comment reminds us that the MAO inhibitor selegiline metabolizes into a stimulant, and many patients report a little pick-me-up. So in addition to selegiline's ability to calm Parkinson's, it may also provide a little lift to those who are feeling apathetic. Keep in mind that the latter benefit has not been evaluated by the FDA. :)
Source: Movement Disorders, April 2007