Category: Parkinson's Disease: Non-Motor Symptoms
Objective: This study aims to explore the associations between baseline sleep quality and the progression of other non-motor symptoms in early Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Background: Sleep disorders occur frequently PD and often are detrimental to patients’ quality of life. The relationship between night-time sleep quality and the other non-motor symptoms of PD is not well characterised.
Method: 109 early PD patients within 1 year of diagnosis were recruited for the study. Baseline and 1-year follow up clinical data, including a comprehensive neuropsychiatric battery and validated non-motor tests, were compared to baseline sleep quality. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to stratify patients into good and poor sleepers based on a cut-off score of 5, as validated by the Movement Disorders Society Sleep Scale Task Force. Mixed-design analyses of variance were performed.
Results: At baseline, there were 58 good sleepers and 63 poor sleepers. Poor sleep quality was associated with more anxiety and depression, but had no relationship to cognition in any domain. Longitudinal analysis using 1-year follow up data showed that poor sleepers had higher Fatigue Severity Scale scores (28.6±13.9 to 31.0±14.7) as opposed to good sleepers, whose scores decreased (23.3±14.0 to 21.0±13.1). Additionally, of the non-motor symptoms, fatigue changed significantly overall from baseline [F(1,102) = 4.04, p = 0.047].
Conclusion: This study shows a longitudinal association between night-time sleep quality and fatigue in early PD patients, independent of medication effect and disease severity. Fatigue manifests early in PD and is currently not well understood, with limited evidence for current treatment options. Our findings show that a sleep-targeted approach to managing fatigue in PD can be explored. Longitudinal associations between sleep quality and other non-motor symptoms such as cognitive decline, anxiety and depression are not yet apparent on one-year follow up.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
M. Koh, C.Y Chua, S. Ng, N. Chia, S.E Saffari, R. Chen, X. Choi, D.L Heng, S. Neo, K.Y Tay, W.L Au, E.K Tan, L. Tan, Z. Xu. Poor Sleep Quality is Associated With Fatigue in Early Parkinson’s Disease: A Longitudinal Study in the Early Parkinson’s Disease Longitudinal Singapore Study (PALS) Cohort [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2020; 35 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/poor-sleep-quality-is-associated-with-fatigue-in-early-parkinsons-disease-a-longitudinal-study-in-the-early-parkinsons-disease-longitudinal-singapore-study-pals-cohort/. Accessed May 18, 2025.« Back to MDS Virtual Congress 2020
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/poor-sleep-quality-is-associated-with-fatigue-in-early-parkinsons-disease-a-longitudinal-study-in-the-early-parkinsons-disease-longitudinal-singapore-study-pals-cohort/