Impact of ethnicity on mood disorders in Parkinson's disease

Anxiety and depression are common in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, yet their prevalence and severity compared to individuals without PD requires more research. Moreover, it has never been compared across different ethnic groups. The objective of this study was to close that gap in the literature by exploring the caseness and severity of anxiety and depression in PD patients of different ethnicities compared to controls without PD. It was found that caseness and severity of anxiety and depression are higher in individuals with PD compared to controls. Furthermore, the caseness and severity of anxiety and depression do not vary significantly among ethnic groups. Finally, depression caseness was not predicted by age, gender, disease duration, restless legs syndrome prevalence, Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) score nor Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale part III (UPDRS-III) score. Anxiety caseness was predicted by gender, with females 2.7 times more likely to have anxiety caseness than males. Overall, our study suggests that treatment plans should be individualized based on prevalence and severity of the two conditions in individuals with PD rather than generalize treatment for specific ethnic groups.