Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and Cognitive Impairment in Chinese Patients with Parkinson’s Disease in Han and Hui Ethnicity

• Published in: Current medical science 2019-02, Vol.39 (1), p.122-126
• Main Authors: Yao, Mei-ling, Zhang, Hong, Xu, Yan, Zhang, Sheng-ming, Gao, Yong-zhe, Shu, Min, Zhang, Jun-Jian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Medicine; Medicine & Public Health
• ISSN: 2096-5230; 2523-899X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11596-019-2009-3

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and they are likely to outweigh the motor symptoms and become a major factor affecting the quality of life of PD patients. However, the studies focusing on the non-motor symptoms in Chinese PD patients from different ethnicity are scarce. The aim of this retrospective study was to investigate neuropsychiatric symptoms and cognitive impairment in Chinese PD patients from Han and Hui populations from central China. Seventy-two Han Chinese PD patients (Han PD group) and 71 age-and sex-matched Hui Chinese PD patients (Hui PD group) were enrolled from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University between Sept. 2011 and Aug. 2014 in the study. The neuropsychiatric symptoms and cognitive impairment were assessed using Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). We found that the proportion of depression, anxiety, apathy, irritability, euphoria and night time behavior disturbances were higher in the Han PD group than in the Hui PD group ( P 0.05). However, the subscale scores of recall domain and language domain in the Han PD group were significantly different from those in the Hui PD group ( P 0.05). This study first showed the recall domain and language domain were different between the Han PD patients and the Hui PD patients. Depression, anxiety, apathy, irritability, euphoria and night time behavior disturbances were less presented in the Hui PD patients. All these differences may be related to the different ethnicity, which would be helpful for clinical physicians to recognize the different non-motor symptoms in Chinese PD patients with different ethnicity.