Sensory Symptoms Across the Lifespan in People With Cerebral Palsy

To estimate the prevalence of sensory symptoms in people with cerebral palsy (CP) across the lifespan.

In this cross-sectional study, the self-reported Sensory Processing Scale Inventory (SPS-I) was administered via Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) between February 1, 2022, and August 15, 2022, to people with CP or their caregivers enrolled in the online MyCP Community Registry. We determined the association between SPS-I scores and age (Pearson correlation) and functional status as assessed using five validated functional classification systems for CP (analysis of variance [ANOVA]). We hypothesized that sensory symptoms would differ between younger and older individuals with CP.

Of 155 responses (28% response rate, age one to 76 years, 34% male), 97% reported at least one bothersome sensory symptom. Total sensory symptoms decreased with age (R² = 0.12, P < 0.0001), driven by decreases in hyposensitivity symptoms (R² = 0.32, P < 0.0001), primarily tactile hyposensitivity (R² = 0.29, P < 0.0001). Sensory symptoms increased with greater functional impairment across all functional domains (ANOVA, P < 0.0001). However, the age-specific decrease in hyposensitivities was most pronounced in people with the greatest gross motor functional impairment (R² = 0.70, P = 0.0004).

Our findings suggest that hyposensitivity, primarily tactile sensitivity, decreases with age in people with CP. Future work should assess whether decreased hyposensitivity contributes to other age-related changes in CP like increased pain.