A - 103 Persistent Longitudinal Differences in Cognition between Men and Women with Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract Objective Cross-sectional studies of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have identified cognitive differences between men with PD (MPD) and women with PD (WPD) at single time points. WPD generally outperform MPD on global cognition, memory, executive functions, verbal fluency, and processing speed measures, whereas MPD perform better on visuospatial tasks. Little is known about sex-based differences in PD cognition longitudinally. This study examined neurocognitive profiles in WPD, MPD, and health controls (HC) over three years. Method Participants were 26 PD (16 WPD, 10 MPD) and 51 HC (28 females, 23 males). Age (M = 60.70, SD = 7.89) and education (M = 15.07, SD = 2.77) were consistent across groups. PD mean disease duration was 4.04 years (SD = 4.56), with samples matched for disease duration and severity. At baseline and three-year follow-up, neuropsychological measures of attention, memory, language, visuospatial, and executive functions were completed. Repeated measures ANOVAs with Bonferroni correction examined differences between samples over time controlling for age and education. Results In both PD and control groups, women outperformed men on measures of verbal learning and verbal memory over time. WPD also performed significantly better than MPD in verbal and visual working memory and semantic fluency tasks at baseline and at 3-year follow-up. In contrast, MPD outperformed WPD on visuospatial perception at both time points, with remaining measures being similar. Conclusions Results build upon earlier cross-sectional studies and confirm that WPD have persisting, comparative strengths in verbal memory, working memory and semantic fluency in contrast to visuospatial perception for MPD in early disease stages.