Article Text
Abstract
Background: The issue of when to start treatment in Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains controversial. Some favour treatment at diagnosis while others opt for a “wait and watch” policy. The effect of the latter policy on the self reported health status of people with PD is unknown.
Aims: To record self reported health status through longitudinal use of a validated PD specific questionnaire (PDQ-39) in untreated PD patients in multiple centres in the UK. To compare patients who were left untreated with those who were offered treatment during follow-up.
Methods: A multicentre, prospective, “real life” observational audit based study addressing patient reported outcomes in relation to self reported health status and other sociodemographic details.
Results: 198 untreated PD were assessed over a mean period of 18 months. During two follow-up assessments, the self reported health status scores in all eight domains of the PDQ-39 and the overall PDQ-39 summary index worsened significantly (p<0.01) in patients left untreated. In a comparative group in whom treatment was initiated at or soon after diagnosis, there was a trend towards improvement in self reported health status scores after treatment was started.
Conclusions: This study addresses for the first time self reported health status, an indicator of health related quality of life, in untreated PD. The findings may strengthen the call for re-evaluation of the policy to delay treatment in newly diagnosed patients with PD.
- DNPD, drug naïve patient with Parkinson’s disease
- HY stage, Hoehn and Yahr stage
- MTPD, patient receiving monotherapy for Parkinson’s disease
- PD, Parkinson’s disease
- PDQ, Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire
- UPDRS, Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale