Is Dysphagia in Older Patients with Parkinson's Disease Associated With Sarcopenia ?

Background: Parkinson's Disease (PD) and sarcopenia share a number of common pathways, and they can potentially affect each other.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the relationship between dysphagia and sarcopenia in elderly patients with PD compared to healthy controls.

Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 54 elderly PD patients and age-, sex- and body mass index-matched 54 healthy elder persons. Demographic and disease characteristics such as disease duration, stage of disease and Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale were recorded. All subjects were assessed by 10- item Eating Assessment Tool, Gugging Swallowing Screen tests and flexible fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) as well as Mini nutritional test short form. Also, A simplified screening tool for assessing sarcopenia (SARC-F), five times sit-to-stand and gait speed tests as well as lumbar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cross-sectional area of psoas and paraspinal muscles were used for evaluation of sarcopenia. Patients were divided as «with normal swallowing» or «with dysphagia» according to the FEES results. Three groups were compared among themselves in terms of evaluation methods.

Results: Sarcopenia evaluation parameters were significantly higher in patient groups compared to the control group. Moreover, muscle measurements evaluated by MRI in patients with dysphagia are lower than both patients with normal swallowing and control group (p value between 0.001 and 0.011).

Conclusions: Patients with PD have lower muscle mass compared to healthy controls, and the situation is more pronounced in dysphagic PD patients.