Parkinson's disease: elevated risk for musculoskeletal pain

Mar 24, 2017

Takeaway

• Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have a 31% higher risk of developing musculoskeletal pain (MSP) than patients without the disease.

Why this matters

• PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease with an incidence of 13.4 per 100,000.
• Previous research on the risk for MSP in PD has been conflicting.

Study design

• This was a retrospective, population-based cohort study of more than 1 million patients who were randomly sampled from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database.
• 490 patients with PD were compared with 1960 age- and sex-matched patients without the disease.
• Patients were followed for a maximum of 8-y of follow-up.
• Funding: Source not disclosed.

Key results

• The rate of MSP in PD (40.61%) is greater than that in control patients (31.07%, adjusted HR=1.31; 95% CI, 1.09-1.58).
• The highest risks for MSP were found in middle-aged male patients with PD (adjusted HR=1.95; 95% CI, 1.11-3.42) and in older male patients with PD (adjusted HR=1.64; 95% CI, 1.24-2.17).

Limitations

• Retrospective design.
• Reliance on medical records which are subject to error in ICD-9-CM codes.

References:

Lien WH, Lien WC, Kuan TS, Wu ST, Chen YT, Chiu CJ. Parkinson's disease and musculoskeletal pain: An 8-year population-based cohort study. Pain. 2017 Mar 21 [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000904. PMID: 28328577

https://www.univadis.com/viewarticle/parkinson-s-disease-elevated-risk-for-musculoskeletal-pain-500277