Synopses & Reviews
The NPI was given to 48 MSA patients and 40 healthy controls. Patients with MSA showed depression (56%), apathy, (48%), agitation (27%), anxiety (27%), hallucinations (15%), disinhibition (13%), irritability (10%), and delusions (4%). Though our results from the NPI show mainly mild disturbances, almost 88% of the caregivers endorsed at least one neuropsychiatric disturbance. The BDI was collected for each patient and confirmed that depression is a common symptom for MSA patients. For a long time it was thought that MSA patients did not suffer from neuropsychiatric problems, but this is a misconception based on our findings. The BDI was found to correlate with disease progression and quality of life. Because there is no cure for MSA and only a small percentage of the patients benefit from anti-parkinsonian medications, identifying the neuropsychiatric disturbances and assessing the patients quality of life should be very important in the treatment of MSA patients.