Caregiver depression linked to patient quality of life in Parkinson’s disease

Key takeaways:

• Study data, taken from The Parkinson’s Foundation Parkinson Outcomes Project, examined 454 patient-caregiver tandems.
• Caregiver depression was linked to patient’s quality of life, emergency hospital visits.

In dyads of Parkinson’s disease patients and caregivers, caregivers with a higher risk for depression were associated with patients’ lower quality of life and higher number of annual ED visits.

“Caregivers are an invaluable resource who support the physical and emotional needs and provide day-to-day care for people with Parkinson’s disease,” Rudmila Rashid, MD, of the department of Neurology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network Open. “However, because of the physical, financial and emotional investment caregiving requires, this role can have negative consequences for caregivers’ well-being.”

Rashid and fellow researchers sought to examine associations between caregivers who report depression symptoms and quality of life for their patients with PD, ED visits and hospitalization.

They conducted a retrospective cohort study at 15 Parkinson’s Foundation Centers of Excellence within the United States and included 454 patient-caregiver tandems (patient mean age 67.3 years, 70.5% male; caregiver mean age 65.9 years, 71.8% female), with baseline data collected from The Parkinson’s Foundation Parkinson Outcomes Project registry between January 2016 and December 2018, and subsequent annual study visits through July 31, 2020.

Symptoms of depression in caregivers were measured with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Patient health-related quality-of-life was assessed via the 39-item Parkinson Disease Questionnaire (PDQ) as well as number of annual ED visits and annual hospitalizations. Researchers utilized linear mixed effects and Poisson regression to assess independent association between caregivers reporting depression symptoms and patient outcomes.

According to results, greater depression symptoms among caregivers were associated with worse patient quality of life as measured by the PDQ (mean score, 33.78 in patients with caregivers who had depression symptoms compared with 24.5 in those with caregivers who did not have symptoms; beta = 0.43; 95% CI, 0.28-0.58) as well as more annual ED visits (beta = 0.02; 95% CI, 0-0.04) but not more hospitalizations (beta = 0.02; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.03).

“This study’s findings suggest that systematic screening for caregiver depression and more support of caregivers is important for the health of patients with PD and their caregivers,” Rashid and colleagues wrote.