Patients with Parkinson’s often face anxiety-related activity limitations

Key takeaways:

• Individuals with Parkinson’s disease were more likely to have anxiety and activity limitations due to anxiety.
• Researchers said it is important to screen patients with PD for anxiety.

SAN DIEGO — About one-third of individuals with Parkinson’s disease experienced anxiety, and many of them reported that it disrupted their daily activities, data show.

“There are a lot of individuals with this condition who get their tremor treated, they get their gait treated, but they leave still being anxious,” John Acquaviva, DO, resident physician in the department of neurology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told Healio at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting.

Acquaviva and colleagues conducted a case control study to evaluate the associations between PD and anxiety. The researchers used data from the Fox Insight Data Exploration Network on 31,124 individuals with PD, 10,135 (32.6%) of whom also had a diagnosis of anxiety

Acquaviva and colleagues reported that patients with a PD diagnosis had a higher likelihood of reporting symptoms of anxiety (OR = 1.385; 95% CI, 1.32-1.46).

Among patients with PD and an anxiety diagnosis, 43.9% reported limitations of daily living due to anxiety. Those patients with activity limitations were more likely to receive treatment for anxiety (OR = 1.65; 95% CI: 1.52-1.79).

“[The study] confirms … significant [numbers of] individuals with Parkinson’s disease who do have anxiety, that’s not something new,” Acquaviva told Healio. “However, what’s more clinically relevant in our study is that anxiety in Parkinson’s disease … leads to more difficulty with activities of daily living, and if they do have difficulty, they are more likely to seek treatment.”

For more information:

John Acquaviva, DO, can be reached at johnmacquaviva@gmail.com.