Pain in Parkinson's Disease: Current Concepts and a New Diagnostic Algorithm

Pain is a significant burden for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with a high impact on quality of life. The present article aims at summarizing epidemiological, pathophysiological, clinical, and neurophysiological data regarding pain in PD.

In this domain, a procedure of systematic assessment is still lacking for the syndromic diagnosis and should take into account pain characteristics, effects of dopaminergic treatment, motor fluctuations, and non-PD-associated pain.

We propose an original questionnaire addressing an algorithm suitable for daily clinical practice. The questionnaire is based on a three-step approach addressing first the relationship between pain and PD (including temporal relationship with the course of the disease, association with motor fluctuations, and impact of antiparkinsonian treatment), before classifying pain into one of three main syndromes (i.e., musculoskeletal pain, psychomotor restlessness pain, and neuropathic pain).

The proposed questionnaire allows the characteristics of each pain type to be determined according to its relationship with the disease and its treatment. The validation of the clinical use of this questionnaire will be the goal of a forthcoming work.