Effects of a cognitive-motor intervention on depressive symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Objective: To verify the effectiveness of a cognitive-motor intervention on depressive symptoms in idiopathic PD patients. Methods: This longitudinal design study assessed 26 patients, divided into experimental and control groups. The subjects were evaluated by means of the Geriatric Depression Scale, being, the experimental group, submitted to a six-month protocol of physiotherapeutic exercises on motor and cognitive functions. With respect to the data analysis, were applied the Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance, the contrast statistic and the Student-t test for independent samples, with a significant level of 5%. Results: The results showed homogeneity of the groups at baseline and the experimental group achieved a trend of significance in the interaction "moment of intervention versus group", as evidenced by the alpha error of 6% with a linear contrast data curve. Conclusion: The proposed protocol has been well accepted by patients diagnosed with idiopathic PD. Although we couldn't contemplate an interval of confidence of 95%, the significant trend obtained represents a potential of this protocol, but with a need of further corroborative studies.