Prior Parkinson's disease diagnosis and subsequent self-reported psychological resilience in the UK Biobank.

BACKGROUND

The association between psychological resilience and Parkinson's disease (PD) remains unclear at the population level.

METHODS

We analyzed 147,143 UK Biobank participants with available Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) data and complete covariate information. Parkinson's disease was ascertained using a previously published UK Biobank algorithm. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between subsequently assessed BRS scores and prior PD after adjustment for demographic, socioeconomic, lifestyle, clinical, and genetic factors. Restricted cubic splines were used to assess nonlinearity.

RESULTS

The mean age was 55.3 years, 56.4% of participants were women, and 346 (0.24%) had Parkinson's disease. Higher subsequently assessed BRS scores were associated with lower odds of a prior Parkinson's disease diagnosis. In the fully adjusted model, each 1-point increase in BRS was associated with an OR of 0.63 (95% CI, 0.55-0.73; p < 0.001). Compared with the lowest BRS tertile, the OR was 0.63 (95% CI, 0.50-0.80) for the middle tertile and 0.43 (95% CI, 0.31-0.59) for the highest tertile (P for trend<0.001). Inverse associations were also observed for all six BRS items. The overall association was significant in restricted cubic spline analysis (p < 0.001), with no evidence of nonlinearity (P for nonlinearity = 0.314). No statistically significant interactions were observed in subgroup analyses. Results were similar in inverse probability-weighted analyses, after additional adjustment for anxiety and depression, and after multiple imputation for missing covariates.

CONCLUSION

Prior Parkinson's disease diagnosis was associated with lower subsequently assessed self-reported psychological resilience in the UK Biobank. Given the observational design, causality cannot be established.