The aim was to compare health-related quality of life (QOL) in patients with Parkinson's disease, osteoarthritis, and persons of a matched control group.
The study was done in 178 patients (94 men and 84 women, 54 with Parkinson's disease and 58 with osteoarthritis) and 66 age- and sex-matched controls. The patients were randomly selected from a register of community health maintenance organizations. The main outcome measures were WHOQOL-100 domains and overall QOL.
The mean scores of most of the WHOQOL-100 domains were significantly poorer for the Parkinson's disease patients. As expected, the scores for "mobility", "activities in daily living", and "working capacity" of the level-of-independence domain were significantly poorer in this group than in the osteoarthritis and control groups. These results indicate that the generic WHOQOL questionnaire discriminated between PD and OA patients, was sensitive to some aspects of patients' QOL perception and multidimensional problems, and was able to differentiate between PD and OA patients in the level-of-independence domain and in the facets we might expect to be mostly affected by the diseases. The frequencies of the separate clinical forms of Parkinson's disease were: rigidity-tremor in 76.8% of patients, rigidity in 13.7%, and tremor in 9.5%.
The patient groups showed the most changes in WHOQOL-100 domains with respect to all facets of the level-of-independence domain, "energy and fatigue" of the physical domain, and three facets of the environment domain. Impairment of QOL included more aspects of QOL in Parkinson's disease than in osteoarthritis patients.