Objective: To study impact of non-motor symptoms evaluated with the Non-Motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS) and on Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients’ quality of life (QOL) depending on the stages.

Background: Non-motor symptoms (NMS) are important prodromal features of PD, which cause poor quality of life with disease progression. There is not sufficient information on how NMS influence the QOL in Uzbek patients with PD.

Method: The study included 84 patients and – 38 women (45,2 %) and 46 men (54,8%) aged 43 to 79 years with PD 2.0-4.0 on the Hoehn and Yahr scale. The percentage of patients in each HY stage was as follows: stage 1: 21.44%; stage 2: 38.52%; stage 3: 33.07 %; stage 4: 5.76%; and stage 5: 1.71%. NMSS was used for assessment of severity of individual non-motor symptoms at the different stages of the disease. QOL was measured by specific Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire-39(PDQ-39).

Results: When analyzing NMS depending on the stage of the disease it has been found out that the data structure of symptoms differs at different stages. The first stage of PD is characterized by a predominance of fatigue (65%) and tachycardia (59%); at stage 2 fatigue and nocturia were detected more often 68% and 48% in turn; stage 3 symptoms were fatigue (72%), cognitive impairment (51%) and dry mouth (58%); Stage 4: fatigue (74%), insomnia (48%) and hyperhidrosis (42%) . NMS severity (on the NMSS scale) significantly correlated with the stage of the disease (r = 0.35, p≤0.05). The analysis related to the correlation between the stage of the disease and QOL indicated that the QOL decreases as the stage of the disease increases. A significant dependence between QOL and NMS has been revealed (r = 0.51 p≤0.05).

Conclusion: It has been established that despite non-specificity of NMS, they can be signs of PD. At least one NMS was identified in all patients while in the vast majority of patients (58%) there was a combination of more than 10 symptoms. The structure and severity of NMS vary according to the stages of the disease. PD patients with prevalent symptoms in any of the NMSS domains indicated significantly worse PDQ-39 scores than those with the absence of non-motor symptoms. NMS reliably affect QOL and can cause disability in patients.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-impact-of-non-motor-symptoms-on-the-quality-of-life-of-patients-with-parkinsons-disease-depending-on-its-stages/