Gender Differences in Parkinsonian Patients- a Swedish Register Study

Parkinson Disease

NonMotorSymptoms, medication, National Registries

BACKGROUND: The complex impact of gender has been studied in different perspectives of health and disease in the literature. However, few attempts have been made to compile data from systematic disease specific registrations Swedish National Quality Registers play an important role in collecting large amounts of diagnose specific data, symptoms, and treatments. The subset Parkinson Registry has been in use for more than 20 years and are represented in all counties and hospitals where neurological care is provided in Sweden and offer optimal conditions to describe gender specific differences in the use of diagnostic tools, lead times and symptom profiles.

Aim: To study differences between gender in diagnostic tools, pharmacological interventions, and self-reported symptoms in Parkinson´s Disease (PD). METHODS: Data were extracted from the Swedish Neuro Registers, one of the Swedish National Quality Registers. A mix of urban and rural parts of the country were chosen and data were divided by gender. Self-reported first experienced PD related symptom was used to define the starting point when processing the data. Zero to three years from this point was defined as early symptoms and over three years as late symptoms. CONCLUSION: Differences between gender were seen in all chosen aspects, both diagnostically. Distinctions were also prominent in reported NonMotorSymptoms (NMS) profiles. These findings should be important to take into consideration for patients, professional staff, and caregivers in the daily work with gender mixed PD groups.

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Sweden