A clinical survey of pain in Parkinson's disease in Eastern China

This is a case-control study to investigate the prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors of pain in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD).

A total of 200 PD patients from eastern China were enrolled in our study. Accordingly, 200 healthy elderly adults were recruited as controls. The characteristics of pain were collected by using the Visual Analog Scale, Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), SF-36 Bodily Pain Scale, Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, Hoehn-Yahr Scale (H-Y), Hamilton Depression Scale, and Leeds Assessment of Neuropathic Symptoms and Signs.

Of the 200 PD patients, pain was complained by 106 patients (53%). According to the SF-36 Bodily Pain Scale, pain morbidity in PD patients was significantly higher than in the control group. The average pain during last 24 h measured by the BPI was 2.67. About 76% of PD patients were found to have one pain type, 21.7% were having two pain types, and 1.9% had three pain types. Further, 69.8% of these patients were presented with musculoskeletal pain, 4.7% with dystonic pain, 22.6% with radicular-neuropathic pain, 20.8% with central neuropathic pain, and 9.4% with akathisia pain. The onset age and depression were the most significant predictors of pain in PD patients (p < 0.05). However, there was no significant association between pain and gender, age, disease duration, or severity of the disease. Only 5.7% of PD patients with pain received treatment in this study.

Pain is frequent and disabling, independent of demographic and clinical variables, and is significantly more common in PD patients.