Investigation of nonmotor symptoms and their clinical correlates in patients with Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND

In this study, we aimed to investigate the clinical features of a large group of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), paying particular attention to the nonmotor symptom (NMS) load. Secondly, we aimed to investigate the clinical correlates of NMSs using the results of various clinical assessments.

METHODS

Data from all PD patients who visited our movement disorders clinic between January 2023 and March 2024 were retrospectively reviewed. We included the data of all patients whose information regarding clinical features and extensive scale results were available.

RESULTS

Overall, we included data from 285 PD patients with a mean age of 64.5 ± 10.0 years (F/M = 119/166). The median scores of the MDS-UPDRS subparts were 9 for MDS-UPDRS-1 and 30 for MDS-UPDRS-3 (off). The median NMSS score was 38 (range: 229), and 46% of the patients had severe to very severe disease in terms of NMS burden. The regression analyses revealed the MDS-UPDRS 3 score, FES-I score, and RBD (0.9772 + 0.453*MDS-UPDRS 3 + 0.724 * FES-I + 15.192*RBD) as predictors of the NMS scale.

CONCLUSIONS

We found a very high NMS burden in our PD cohort. Remarkably, RBD, motor stage, and concern about falling were found to correlate with NMS load.