The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on People with Parkinson’s Disease

  1. Ethan G. Brown
  2. Lana M. Chahine
  3. Samuel M. Goldman
  4. Monica Korell
  5. Emerald Mann
  6. Daniel R. Kinel
  7. Vanessa Arnedo
  8. Kenneth L. Marek
  9. Caroline M. Tanner

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Background: The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) is poorly understood. Objective: To rapidly identify areas of need and improve care in people with PD during the COVID-19 pandemic, we deployed a survey to assess COVID-19 symptoms and the pandemic’s effect among those with and without COVID-19. Methods: People with and without PD participating in the online study Fox Insight (FI) were invited to complete a survey between April 23 and May 23, 2020. Among people reporting COVID-19 diagnoses, we compared symptoms and outcomes in people with and without PD. Among people not reporting COVID-19, we assessed access to healthcare and services and PD symptoms. Results: 7,209/9,762 active FI users responded (approximately 74% response rate), 5,429 people with PD and 1,452 without PD. COVID-19 diagnoses were reported by 51 people with and 26 without PD. Complications were more frequent in people with longer PD duration. People with PD and COVID-19 experienced new or worsening motor (63%) and nonmotor (75%) symptoms. People with PD not diagnosed with COVID-19 reported disrupted medical care (64%), exercise (21%), and social activities (57%), and worsened motor (43%) and non-motor (52%) symptoms. Disruptions were more common for those living alone, with lower income and non-White race. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with wide-ranging effects on people with PD, and certain groups may be at particular risk. FI provides a rapid, patient-centered means to assess these effects and identify needs that can be used to improve the health of people with PD.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.3233/jpd-202249
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.14.20153023: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Standard Protocol Approvals, Registrations, and Patient Consents: The FI study and the survey for this COVID-19 study were approved by the New England IRB and informed consent was obtained online from all participants.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Several limitations of this study must be acknowledged. We relied on self-report of COVID-19 infection and outcomes. In sensitivity analyses, applying more stringent criteria for COVID-19 classification of cases did not change our findings. Survey completion was naturally limited to people who were healthy enough to log-in online and fill out a survey, and we likely did not capture those with very advanced PD nor those with severe COVID-19 illness. People with PD and COVID-19 may have been less likely to fill out a survey, preventing our study from identifying true differences in infection risk or outcome severity. Additionally, certain populations were underrepresented, and the fact that we did see significantly greater disruption from the pandemic in some of these groups (e.g. non-White race, lower income) indicates that the true differences may be much larger. Finally while PD-diagnosis is self-reported in FI, available data indicate high accuracy of self-reported PD in research settings; in one study that verified self- reported diagnosis of PD through use of a Webcam, a neurologist agreed with the diagnosis in 97% of cases.42 An effort to validate diagnoses in FI is currently underway. Our study raises important questions for future analyses. Anosmia in COVID-19, though usually transient,43 may represent true viral invasion of the olfactory bulbs.44 Hyposmia predicts PD-associated clinical and pathological changes.45, 46 This association, among other neurologic manifesta...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.14.20153023v1 on medRxiv