Variables associated with communicative participation in Parkinson's disease and its relationship to measures of health-related quality-of-life.
Megan J McAuliffe, Carolyn R Baylor, Kathryn M Yorkston
PMID 27347713WHAT IT FOUND
In 378 people with Parkinson's disease, self-reported participation in daily communication was linked to perceived speech difficulty, speech use, cognition, emotion, fatigue, swallowing, age, sex and country.
A communication-specific measure added information beyond quality-of-life scales.
Key findings
01In 378 participants with Parkinson's disease, the final regression model accounted for approximately 43% of the variance in Communication Participation Item Bank scores.
02Higher communicative participation was associated with less severe self-reported speech symptoms, higher everyday speech usage, older age, and younger New Zealand participants reporting higher participation than US participants, but women did not show the same age-related increase as men.
03The Communication Participation Item Bank shared less than 20% of variance with PROMIS Global Health subscales and approximately one-third with the PDQ-8, so these measures were not interchangeable.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used self-report data and a cross-sectional design, so it can show associations but not cause and effect. There were no objective measures of speech intelligibility, language, cognition, hearing, or disease severity, and the authors note they did not directly measure high-level language function. Participants had to report that Parkinson's disease negatively affected communication, so people whose communication was not affected may be under-represented. People living in nursing homes were excluded because the CPIB was not validated in that group, so results may not apply to more advanced Parkinson's disease. The analysis used 378 participants from a larger cohort of 428, and the US and New Zealand samples differed in average age. The authors could not explain the country difference and say replication is needed.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflicts-of-interest declaration. The publication types list NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that objective speech severity alone determines communicative participation or that quality-of-life scores can replace a communication-specific measure. The study used self-report associations, not causal tests.