Objective: To compare the total burden of non-motor symptoms between Parkinson’s disease and non-degenerative parkinsonism and to study the possible dopaminergic background of these symptoms.

Background: Non-motor symptoms severely reduce the quality of life of Parkinson’s disease patients. Most previous studies have compared non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease to those in healthy controls, with limited data of patients with non-neurodegenerative parkinsonism.

Methods: Non-motor symptoms were evaluated using the Non-Motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS) at brain dopamine transporter (DAT) [123I]FP-CIT SPECT scanning in 193 tremor/parkinsonism patients. According to clinical follow-up and the imaging result, 84 patients were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and 109 control patients had normal striatal dopamine function. Non-motor symptoms and their possible associations with striatal DAT binding were investigated.

Results: There were no differences in total NMSS scores between Parkinson’s disease patients and controls. Control patients reported more perception-related (p=0.045) and attention/memory-related non-motor symptoms compared to Parkinson’s disease patients (p<0.001). Total NMSS score did not correlate with DAT binding in either group.

Conclusions: Total non-motor symptom burden shows no specificity for Parkinson’s disease or for brain dopaminergic defect in a mixed clinical population of patients with parkinsonism.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/no-differences-in-the-total-burden-of-non-motor-symptoms-between-parkinsons-disease-and-non-degenerative-parkinsonism/