Comparison of profile of non motor symptoms in Japanese patients with PD with European patients and healthy controls. Extension of the NMSQuest study

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of non-motor symptoms (NMS) inJapanese PD patients by using NMS Questionnaire, and compare theprofile of NMS with PD with European patients and healthy controls.Background: Early identification and evaluation of NMS of PD patientsare necessary so that it has been known that NMS in PD patients is closelyrelated with quality of life. In late years a European PD non-motor groupdeveloped a new NMS questionnaire (NMSQuest) and confirmed theutility.Methods: NMSQuest is NMS screening questionnaire containing 30items of non-motor questionnaires. This instrument does not provide anoverall score of disability and is not a graded or rating instrument. Japanesetranslation of NMSQuest (NMSQuest-J) was used in this study. Consec-utive Japanese PD patients were invited to fill out the NMSQuest-J.Original European data consists of 123 PD patients and 96 controls.Results: Fifty-three PD patients completed the NMSQuest-J (mean age:66.1±11.2 years, mean disease duration: 6.9±4.7 years, mean Hoehn-Yahr stage: 2.7). There are no differences in these demographic data withEuropean PD patients. The most commonly reported non-motor symptomswere constipation (78.4%), nocturia (75%), memory problem (64.7%). andlacking of concentration (82.4%). Constipation, swallow problem, apathy,loss of concentration, fall and diplopia were reported more frequently inJapanese PD patients than European PD patients.Conclusions: NMS was highly and significantly more prevalent in Jap-anese and European PD patients than controls. In several items such as constipation, swallow problem, apathy, loss of concentration, fall anddiplopia, Japanese patients reported more frequently than European pa-tients. The differences in NMS prevalence among different races might becaused by cultural difference. NMS in PD patients is the crucial problemoften underdiagnosed.