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Susan, I have written to you before about Ken's dementia and our success using Aricept for him. When he was diagnosed over 17 years ago, he underwent a thorough battery of tests at UCI Irvine and I was told that a certain percentage of PD patients develop dementia and he would be one of them. This they determined from their tests. He then started to use sinemet and all signs of mental problems completely disappeared. His Neurologist even stated that she thought the dementia diagnosis w as mistaken. For ten years after that, Ken worked as a judge and was considered one of the sharpest minds on the local bench. However, about seven years ago, he was diagnosed as having Shy-Drager Syndrome as well as PD, and it was obvious that he could no longer take cases. The dementia progressed to the point that he sometimes didn't recognize me and he was often very paranoid. I took him to Daycare where there were many Alzheimer's patients but his dementia never seemed quite the same as theirs. We had him retested, and he was below the 5 percentile on every cognitive test except IQ in which still tested 130! As a therapist myself, this seemed crazy, but they said it was obviously still in there, but he couldn't process it anymore. Then Aricept came along, and we tried it. His Neurologist says that she's used it on many patients, but none has had the results we see with Ken. There are times when he is completely clear and can talk with us much as he used to. Physically, he is getting much worse, but mentally, he continues to be improved. I am not writing this to suggest that Aricept will do for anyone else what it has done for us but to let you know that cognitive problems often are associated with PD and that they can sometimes be diagnosed early in the progression. Barbara Smith, cg/Ken/70/17