Category: Parkinson's Disease: Non-Motor Symptoms
Objective: We aimed to explore the relationship between frequency and severity of REM sleep behavior disorder(RBD) and clinical characteristics in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients.
Background: PD is frequently associated with RBD,which manifests as violent dreams, dream-enactment behavior and often lead to sleep-related injury.
Method: We reviewed 507 patients who completed the RBD questionnaire-Hong Kong (RBD-HK) scale from November 2015 to October 2020. We evaluated RBD-HK factor scores (factor1: dream-related features; factor2: dream-enactment behavior) and highest frequency scores of factor1 and factor2.Sleep-related injury was assessed according to a fall in bed or hurt yourself/others. We analyzed the correlation between frequency and severity of RBD and clinical features. All patients underwent clinical assessments, including Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), Hoehn-Yahr (H-Y) stage, PD duration, Montreal Cognitive Assessment scale (MoCA), and Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression(HRSD) and Hamilton anxiety scale(HAMA). Patients taking medications were recorded in detail.
Results: The mean age of PD patients was 65.2±9.4 years and 304 were male. Spearman correlation analysis showed that highest factor2 frequency score was positively correlated with use of levodopa, disease duration, LEDs, UPDRS I-IV scores, H-Y stage, ESS, PSQI, HAMA and HRSD scores; highest factor1 frequency score was positively correlated with UPDRS I, UPDRS IV, PSQI, HAMA and HRSD scores; and sleep-related injury was positively correlated with disease duration and UPDRS I-III scores. There was no correlation between frequency and severity of RBD and use of hypnotic drugs in our study.
Conclusion: Frequency of behavioral episodes increased with progression of disease duration and severity, motor symptoms, sleep and mood disorders, and was affected by the use of levodopa. Frequency of nightmares was related to motor complications, sleep and mood disorders only. While sleep-related injury aggravated with progression of disease duration and severity and motor symptoms. The influence of RBD duration should be considered in future study.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
JY. Wang, Y. Shen, CF. Liu. Relationship between frequency and severity of REM sleep behavior disorder and clinical features in patients with Parkinson’s disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2021; 36 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/relationship-between-frequency-and-severity-of-rem-sleep-behavior-disorder-and-clinical-features-in-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/. Accessed June 15, 2025.« Back to MDS Virtual Congress 2021
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/relationship-between-frequency-and-severity-of-rem-sleep-behavior-disorder-and-clinical-features-in-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/