Research Article Comparison of the Psychological Symptoms and Disease-Specific Quality of Life between Early- and Typical-Onset Parkinson’s Disease Patients Seyed-Mohammad Fereshtehnejad, 1,2 Hasti Hadizadeh, 3 Farzaneh Farhadi, 3 Gholam Ali Shahidi, 4 Ahmad Delbari, 1,5 and Johan Lökk 1,6 1 Division of Clinical Geriatrics, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences, and Society (NVS), Karolinska Institutet, Novum 5th Floor, 14186 Stockholm, Sweden 2 Firoozgar Clinical Research Development Center (FCRDC), Firoozgar Hospital, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 15937-48711, Iran 3 Medical Student Research Committee (MSRC), Faculty of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 14496-14535, Iran 4 Movement Disorders Clinic, Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 14496-14535, Iran 5 Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Tehran 19857-13834, Iran 6 Department of Geriatric Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, 14186 Stockholm, Sweden Correspondence should be addressed to Seyed-Mohammad Fereshtehnejad; sm.fereshtehnejad@ki.se Received 27 July 2014; Revised 13 December 2014; Accepted 14 December 2014; Published 29 December 2014 Academic Editor: H´ elio Teive Copyright © 2014 Seyed-Mohammad Fereshtehnejad et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. he impact of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on psychological status and quality of life (QoL) may vary depending on age of disease onset. he aim of this study was to compare psychological symptoms and disease-speciic QoL between early onset versus the rest of the PD patients. A total number of 140 PD patients with the mean current age of 61.3 (SD = 10.4) yr were recruited in this study. PD patients with the onset age of ≤50 yr were deined as “early-onset” (EOPD) group ( = 45), while the ones with >50 yr at the time of diagnosis were categorized as the “typical-onset” (TOPD) patients ( = 95). Diferent questionnaires and scales were used for between-group comparisons including PDQ39, HADS (hospital anxiety and depression scale), FSS (fatigue severity scale), MNA (mininutritional assessment), and the UPDRS. Depression score was signiicantly higher in EOPD group (6.3 (SD = 4.5) versus 4.5 (SD = 4.2),  = 0.02). Among diferent domains of QoL, emotion score was also signiicantly higher in the EOPD group (32.3 (SD = 21.6) versus 24.4 (SD = 22.7),  = 0.05). Our indings showed more severe depression and more impaired emotional domain of QoL in early-onset PD patients. Depression and anxiety play an important role to worsen QoL among both EOPD and TOPD patients, while no interaction was observed in the eicacy of these two psychiatric symptoms and the onset age of PD patients. 1. Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) is mostly diagnosed in the elderly though a substantial minority of the patients develop symp- toms before 50 years of age who are called early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD) patients. Patients with EOPD have been detected with rather diferent characteristics; hence, a diferent impact of the disease on their lives is expected [1–4]. By developing PD, patients might experience premature aging, increasing dependency, and impairment of occupational performance. he longer the duration of the disease is, the higher physical, economic, and psychological burden of PD oten occurs in patients, especially in younger adults with greater socioeconomic responsibilities. On the other hand, treatment-induced motor complications would be higher among the EOPD patients and may contribute to a greater degree of physical impairment and social squeals [2, 3, 5, 6]. Although most of the previous studies have reported Hindawi Publishing Corporation Parkinson’s Disease Volume 2014, Article ID 819260, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/819260