Non-motor symptoms in patients with parkinson’s disease in Babol, North of Iran

Introduction. Non-motor symptoms (NMS) are common in Parkinson’s disease. It can be predominant as the disease advances, thereby constituting a major source of disease burden for patients. Current study was conducted to determine the prevalence of these symptoms in the north of Iran. Method. This cross-sectional study was performed on 109 patients with Parkinson’s disease in Ayatollah Rouhani Hospital in Babol, North of Iran, during 2017-2018. NMS were obtained from a NMS standard questionnaire containing 30 questions plus the clinical and demographic information in a separate checklist of patients. NMS were then classified into nine distinct categories. The association of NMS with clinical and demographic variables was evaluated by the SPSS software version 23. In all cases, the significance level of the tests was less than 0.05. Results. The mean age of the patients was 70.59 ± 9.69 years (46-97 years) and 61 (56%) were male. The duration of the disease was 5.61 ± 4.89 years. NMS associated with sleep / fatigue with the prevalence of 76.1% were the most prevalent symptoms. NMS related to mood / cognition with frequency of 65.1%, cardiovascular with 51.4% and miscellaneous with 51.4% frequency were the most commonly reported symptoms in patients. Severity of the disease was significantly correlated with the symptoms of the cardiovascular, attention / memory and GI tract (P = 0.001). Age and education of the patients with cardiovascular symptoms and attention / memory had a significant relationship (P < 0.05). Occupation and marriage of the patients were significant with attention/memory symptoms (P < 0.05). Conclusions. The sleep-related symptoms and fatigue were the most common NMSs in Parkinson’s patients. Also, the severity of the disease and ageing were statistically significant with the prevalence of the NMS in patients. Therefore, consideration should be given to older patients suffering from more severe Parkinson’s disease.