Objective: We aimed to explore the relationship between olfactory discrimination ability and subjective social support in a sample of patients with Parkinson’s Disease. We hypothesized that better olfactory discrimination ability would be associated with a higher degree of subjective social support. As a secondary hypothesis, based on previous research we expected the association to be stronger in women than in men.

Background: A growing body of evidence suggests an association between olfactory abilities and measures of social performance and experience. For example, it has been recently shown that better olfactory discrimination ability is associated with mentalizing skill in women.

Method: All data was drawn from the DEMPARK/LANDSCAPE cohort. 63 Patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s (28 female and 35 male) completed the Parkinsons’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) as well as the Sniffin’ Sticks test battery for olfactory discrimination ability. We calculated Spearman Rho correlations between the olfactory discrimination test and the social support subscale of the PDQ-39 and a multiple regression to control for the influence of depression, apathy, disease duration, and cognitive functioning. All calculations were conducted for male and female patients separately. Higher scores on the PDQ-39 subscale denominate subjectively worse social support, i.e. subjective lack of social support.

Results: No correlation was found in the male sample (rs(33) = .045, p = .798), while a strong correlation emerged in the female sample (rs(26) = .491, p = .008). In the regression analysis, only olfactory discrimination ability emerged as significant predictor (β = .543, p = .013).

Conclusion: Better olfactory discrimination performance is correlated with subjective lack of social support in female Parkinson’s patients. The present results underscore the connection between social experience and olfactory abilities in women, while the specific direction found in the present results illustrates the complex nature of these associations and suggests the need for further research especially in clinical populations.

« Back to 2023 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/olfactory-discrimination-ability-is-associated-with-subjective-lack-of-social-support-in-female-parkinsons-patients/