Gender differences on motor and non-motor symptoms of de novo patients with early Parkinson’s disease

The affect of gender differences on clinical presentation of Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains controversial. De novo PD subjects were recruited from a trial-based multicenter cohort in clinical sites of Chinese Parkinson Study Group. Demographic information, motor and non-motor symptom measurements were performed by face-to-face interview using specific scales. Scores and frequencies of symptoms were compared between male and female patients, and regression models were used to control the effects of age and disease duration. Totally 428 PD patients were enrolled in this study, and 60.3 % of them were male. Total UPDRS scores were not significantly different between male and female (25.02 ± 12.84 vs. 25.24 ± 13.22, adjusted p = 0.984). No significant gender differences were found on scores for four cardinal motor signs, neither on motor subtypes (PIGD 19.0 vs. 15.9 %, adjusted p = 0.303). Female patients more likely had depressive symptoms (38.8 vs. 27.5 %, adjusted p = 0.023; CES-D score 13.78 ± 10.91 vs. 11.23 ± 9.42, adjusted p = 0.015). Male patients had significantly higher scores for MMSE (28.26 ± 2.21 vs. 27.00 ± 3.38, adjusted p = 0.0001), and lower scores for identification (1.39 ± 1.63 vs. 2.01 ± 2.63, adjusted p = 0.002) in ADAS-cog. No significant differences were found for other non-motor symptoms including motivation problems (male 29.8 % vs. female 30.6 %, adjusted p = 0.760), fatigue (62.6 vs. 70.5 %, adjusted p = 0.140), constipation (37.2 vs. 30.1 %, adjusted p = 0.243), and sleep quality (57.6 vs. 61.3 %, adjusted p = 0.357; PSQI score: 5.62 ± 3.31 vs. 6.10 ± 3.53, adjusted p = 0.133). Female might be more depressed and have worse performance on cognition in early untreated PD patients, but gender differences are not apparent on motor and other non-motor symptoms.