Objective: The study objective was to assess the neuropsychiatric profile in Moldavian Parkinson’s disease patients with chronic pain.

Background: Psychological factors can influence both the clinical picture and health related quality of life in patients with PD. Because anxiety and depression are treatable conditions, early diagnosis and treatment may help to improve quality of life in these patients.

Methods: We have included 140 consecutive PD patients from a tertiary care center, 73 patients with chronic pain and 67 without it, including 79 (56.4%) men and 61 (43.6%) women. All patients were assessed with UPDRS scale, Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory and Parkinson’s disease Questionnaire 39 (PDQ-39), other collected variables being age, treatment duration, age at motor onset, PD phenotype and H&Y staging. Chronic pain was analyzed using a structured interview questionnaire. Windows Office Excel 2007 program was used for statistical analysis.

Results: The majority of patients presented with musculoskeletal pain (60 cases or 42.8%), 5 (3.6%) – with radicular pain, 4 (2.8%) cases presented dystonic pain and 16 (11.4%) cases have had headache. Reactive anxiety had higher values in patients with chronic pain vs. without pain (35.73±0.94 vs. 31.77±0.86, p<0.01), the same was found for trait anxiety (52.31±0.85 vs. 48.0±0.90, p<0.001). Anxiety scores correlated with pain intensity (r=0.29, p<0.01) and quality of life scores (r=0.4, p<0.001), but not with measures of disease severity. Beck depression score was higher in PD patients with chronic pain (9.49±0.64 vs. 6.31±0.51, p<0.001) and correlated statistically significant with pain intensity (r=0.36, p<0.001). There was a moderate correlation between depression and motor scores (r=0.43, p<0.001) and depression and health related quality of life (r=0.65, p<0.001).

This study underlies the importance of addressing neuropshychiatric disturbances such as anxiety and depression in patients with PD and chronic pain, since they contribute to both clinical picture of pain and health related quality of life.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/neuropsychiatric-disturbances-in-parkinsons-disease-patients-with-chronic-pain/