A Glance into Regional Parkinson’s Disease Characteristics: What Differs from Northwest to Southeast of Turkey?

Introduction: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second common neurodegenerative disease following Alzheimer’s disease. Multifactorial risk factors including environmental, nutritional and genetic factors may affect the frequency, risks, and genetic features of PD in different geographic and ethnic regions. Background: Our aim was to investigate the sociodemographic and disease characteristics, cognitive performances of patients with PD in Nusaybin, a southeastern city, and Hendek a northwestern city which have different geographical-cultural status, and to investigate the possible effects of regional differences on disease characteristics. Method: This retrospective study includes the data of patients with the diagnosis of PD who presented to outpatient Neurology clinics of Hendek State Hospital which is a city in the northwestern region of Turkey between April 2017 and June 2018 and patients who presented to the outpatient Neurology clinics of Nusaybin State Hospital, which is a city in the southeastern region of Turkey between October 2015 and January 2017. SPSS.23c (Statistical package for Windows) database was used for statistical analysis. Results: Our study included 114 cases with Parkinson’s disease in Hendek and 96 cases in Nusaybin.The majority of patients had idiopathic PD (IPD) in both provinces (96.9% in Hendek, and 92.1% in Nusaybin). Educational status of female patients was significantly lower in Nusaybin when compared with Hendek (9.3% and 63.3%, respectively). Family history for IPD was significantly higher in Hendek than Nusaybin (31.7% and 9.9%, respectively). There was a positive correlation between educational status and cognitive performances of the patients in both groups. Negative correlation was found between standardized mini mental test (s-mmt) scores and stage, severity of IPD in both groups. Conclusion: The socio-cultural status of our country decreases by going from west to east. Thus knowledge about PD, accessibility to the hospitals and health centers with the opportunity to get optimum treatments may show variabilities in between the regions. We believe that our study provides a comparison of patients with PD in two different regions of our country with different geographic, genetic characteristics, and development levels.