A four-year trajectory of Alexithymia in Parkinson’s disease patients

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the presence of Alexithymia in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients compared to their caregivers (CG) and to investigate whether Alexithymia progressed over a 4-year observational period. Alexithymia in PD is a cognitive affective disturbance resulting in difficulty to identify, distinguish and describe feelings and it is known to be strongly associated with health-related quality of life and other cognitive/ neuropsychiatric symptoms. So far, there have been no longitudinal investigations of Alexithymia in PD. We recruited 34 moderately progressed PD patients (mean disease duration of 8.9 ± 5.3 years) and their caregivers in our neurological department and did a baseline and follow-up assessment using the validated Toronto Alexithymia Scale-26 (TAS-26). Our data show that Alexithymia is more abundant in the PD cohort compared to their caregivers (p = 0.007, PD 21 %, CG 6 % at follow-up). In the 4-year observational period, Alexithymia did not increase significantly in PD patients or caregivers. However, there was a high variance in Alexithymia scores in both groups. It remains unclear when Alexithymia appears during the disease course and whether there is a dynamic in Alexithymia scores later in PD progression. This should be the objective for future studies of Alexithymia in advanced PD patients.