Dietary Patterns and Nonmotor Symptoms in Parkinson's Disease: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Evidence-based treatment for nonmotor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) is limited. Lifestyle-based improvements including dietary changes may be a potential management strategy. The intent of this research was to investigate the extent to which 3 dietary indices (Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay [MIND], Dietary Inflammation Index [DII], and Healthy Diet Indicator [HDI-2020]) are associated with overall and individual nonmotor symptom severity among individuals with PD.

An exploratory cross-sectional analysis of dietary (food frequency questionnaire) and clinical data was undertaken, including measures of overall nonmotor symptom severity, such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, apathy, sleep problems, daytime sleepiness, and cognitive impairment. The relationship between each dietary score and symptom outcome was assessed by linear regression for continuous variables and through general linear model analysis for tertiles of dietary adherence.

None of the dietary indices significantly predicted the total nonmotor symptom severity score. The HDI predicted a significant decrease in fatigue scores as measured by the NeuroQoL fatigue item (standardized β = -.19, p = 0.022), after adjusting for age, sex, energy intake, years since diagnosis, physical activity level, education, and smoking. Self-reported depression symptoms reduced by .17 (standardized β) for each unit increase in HDI score (p = 0.035), after controlling for age, gender, energy intake, and years since diagnosis. No other significant associations were evident between dietary scores and any other nonmotor symptoms.

Our results indicate that fatigue and depression in PD may be modified by diet; however, more research is needed using a larger sample to replicate these findings.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2022.2056544 .