Abstract
Background Weight loss in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients is a common but poorly understood manifestation. Several studies have reported that weight changes could be related to motor symptoms, drug side effects, dysphagia, depression, and/or dementia. Weight loss in PD is not a benign phenomenon and it has several clinical and prognostic implications with increased morbidity and mortality. Thus, it is crucial to determine nutritional changes in PD patients in order to prevent malnutrition and improve their quality of life. Objective To compare body composition and resting metabolic rates between PD patients and controls. Methods A total of 64 PD patients and 52 controls were studied. The Hoehn-Yahr scale was used to determine the disease stage, clinical and epidemiological data were recorded from verbal questionnaire, Inbody S10® was used to collect corporal parameters, and FitMate system was used to assess the resting metabolic rate. Results No significant differences were found between both experimental groups in age, gender, height, cholesterol levels, and the presence of hypertension, diabetes, and hypo/hyperthyroidism. However, the PD group showed lower body fat mass, whole-body fat percentage, and greater resting metabolic rate compared to controls (p < 0.05), with no significant differences in musculoskeletal mass. Parkinson's disease postural instability/gait difficulty (PD-PIGD) subtype showed lower body fat parameters, increased fat-free mass, and higher resting metabolic rates. Conclusions These results suggest that PD patients present an increased resting metabolic rate associated with the postural instability/gait difficulty PD subtype, allowing a selective decrease of body fat mass and not musculoskeletal mass. Of note, several disease-related factors may contribute to this weight loss in PD patients, being a complex and multifactorial consequence. Our findings could likely be one of the many contributing factors. However, present findings may further add to our understanding of the phenomenon of weight loss in patients with PD.
Highlights
Worldwide, Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease
Several disease-related factors may contribute to this weight loss observed in PD patients including nonmotor symptoms such as hyposmia [13], dysphagia, gastrointestinal dysfunction, depression, and dementia [8, 14], as well as motor impairments with hand-mouth incoordination and Parkinson’s Disease chewing difficulties, all leading to a reduced food intake [3]
Resting metabolic rate (RMR), called resting energy expenditure, is defined as the energy required by the body in a resting condition [17]. is energy requirement is important because it typically accounts for the largest portion of total energy needs
Summary
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease. Unintentional weight loss is commonly seen in PD patients [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Several disease-related factors may contribute to this weight loss observed in PD patients including nonmotor symptoms such as hyposmia [13], dysphagia, gastrointestinal dysfunction, depression, and dementia [8, 14], as well as motor impairments with hand-mouth incoordination and Parkinson’s Disease chewing difficulties, all leading to a reduced food intake [3]. Weight loss in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients is a common but poorly understood manifestation. Several studies have reported that weight changes could be related to motor symptoms, drug side effects, dysphagia, depression, and/or dementia. A total of 64 PD patients and 52 controls were studied. e Hoehn-Yahr scale was used to determine the disease stage,
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