Objective: To explore the links between cognitive complaints, anxiety and depression and reporting of pain in People with Parkinson’s disease (PD, PwP) from different ethnic backgrounds.

Background: Chronic pain affects up to 90% PwP.¹ Cognitive impairment, anxiety and depression can aggravate chronic PD-related pain.^1,2 The impact of ethnicity on pain perception and reporting has been recognized in a range of painful conditions, but has not yet been reported in PwP from ethnic minorities, where a distinctive non-motor endo-phenotype has recently been proposed.³

Method: An exploratory, retrospective analysis of PwP enrolled in the King’s PD Pain Scale (KPPS) validation study recruited from nine centres across the UK. Conducting Spearman’s correlations, we examined associations between KPPS total score, cognitive complaints declared on the Nonmotor Symptoms Scale (NMSS), anxiety and depression scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) across different ethnic groups.

Results: In total, 69 PwP – 23 Black (57% female), 23 Asian (57% female), 23 White (65% female), median Hoehn and Yahr stage II (I – IV) were matched based on the KPPS total scores. In White PwP, the KPPS total score showed statistically significant positive correlation with cognitive scores (NMSS, Domain 5; r_s=0.538, p=0.008), depression (r_s=0.666, p=0.001) and anxiety (r_s=0.457, p=0.028).
In Black and Asian PwP, no statistically significant associations were found between burden of pain and cognitive complaints (Black: p=0.656, Asian: p=0.705), anxiety (Black: p=0.318, Asian: p=0.686), or depression (Black: p=0.971, Asian: p=0.255).

Conclusion: Dissimilarities in the pattern of the association of pain burden with cognitive complaints, depression and anxiety between White and non-White PwP with chronic pain are evident in this small retrospective data analysis. The observed differences may have multiple explanations and call for large scale, controlled studies in multi-ethnic population of PwP.
We acknowledge the efforts of all contributors, collaborators, and administrative staff of the KPPS validation study (UKCRN No. 13344)

References: 1. Ghosh P, Imbriani P, Caputi N, Natoli S, Schirinzi T, Di Lazzaro G, et al. A Dual Centre Study of Pain in Parkinson’s Disease and Its Relationship with Other Non-Motor Symptoms. Journal of Parkinson’s disease. 2020;10(4):1817-25. 2. Rukavina K, Leta V, Sportelli C, Buhidma Y, Duty S, Malcangio M, et al. Pain in Parkinson’s disease: new concepts in pathogenesis and treatment. Current opinion in neurology. 2019;32(4):579-88. 3. Sauerbier A, Schrag A, Brown R, Martinez-Martin P, Aarsland D, Mulholland N, et al. Clinical Non-Motor Phenotyping of Black and Asian Minority Ethnic Compared to White Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease Living in the United Kingdom. Journal of Parkinson’s disease. 2021;11(1):299-307.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/cognitive-complaints-anxiety-depression-and-reporting-of-pain-in-parkinsons-disease-in-a-multi-ethnic-population-dissimilarities-between-white-and-non-white-patients/