Neuropsychological impairment in Wilson's disease
A. Medalia, K. Isaacs-Glaberman and I. H. Scheinberg
Department of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.
To examine the neuropsychological deficits of patients with Wilson's
disease (WD), 19 neurologically impaired patients with WD were administered
the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (revised), Wechsler Memory Scale,
Dementia Rating Scale, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Boston Naming Test,
Trail Making Test, and Animal Naming Test. Their test scores were compared
with those of 12 neurologically asymptomatic patients with WD and 15 normal
controls. The neurologically impaired patients scored lower than did the
control group on the Performance IQ, Full-Scale IQ, Dementia Rating Scale,
and Trail Making Test, and they scored lower on the Wechsler Memory Scale
than did both the asymptomatic and control groups. The major areas of
deficit for the neurologically impaired WD group were in motor and memory
functioning. Computed tomographic and neurologic examinations of the
neurologically impaired patients with WD generally reflected abnormalities
of the basal ganglia.
