Associations of motor symptom severity and quality of life to motor task performance in upper and lower extremities across task complexity in Parkinson's disease

Anne Sofie Bøgh Malling, Bo Mohr Morberg, Lene Wermuth, Ole Gredal, Per Bech, Bente Rona Jensen

Abstract

The authors examined the associations between the performance of upper- and lower-extremity motor tasks across task complexity and motor symptom severity, overall disease severity, and the physical aspects of quality of life in persons with Parkinson's disease. The performance was assessed for three lower-extremity tasks and two upper-extremity tasks of different levels of complexity. The motor symptoms and overall disease severity correlated significantly with all motor tasks with higher correlation coefficients in the complex tasks. Thus, the strength of the association between disease severity or severity of motor symptoms and motor performance is task-specific, with higher values in complex motor tasks than in simpler motor tasks. Mobility-related and activity-of-daily-living-related quality of life correlated with lower-extremity tasks of low and medium complexity and with the complex upper-extremity task, respectively; this suggests that Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 is capable of differentiating between the impact of gross and fine motor function on quality of life.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMotor Control
Volume23
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)445-460
Number of pages16
ISSN1087-1640
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes

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