Utility of plasma Neurofilament light as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of the postural instability gait disorder motor subtype in early Parkinson’s disease

Table 1 Demographic and clinical characteristics of all subjects at baseline

Parameter	HC	PD	TD	PIGD	Indeterminate
Subjects, n	50	149	70	55	24
Age, years	57.2 ± 5.4^a	64.0 ± 8.3^b**	64.0 ± 8.0	63.6 ± 8.3	65.0 ± 9.4
Male sex, n(%)	25 (50)	85 (57)	43 (61)	28 (51)	14 (58)
Age at onset, years	–	62.9 ± 8.5	63.1 ± 8.2	62.3 ± 8.5	63.8 ± 9.4
Disease duration, years	–	1.1 ± 0.9	0.9 ± 0.7	1.3 ± 1.3^d*	1.2 ± 0.6^c*
LEDD	–	176.5 ± 135.3	172.6 ± 133.3	182.9 ± 142.4	172.3 ± 129.2
MDS-UPDRS Part II: ADLs	–	4.1 ± 3.2	3.7 ± 2.9	4.7 ± 3.5	4.0 ± 3.2
MDS-UPDRS Part III: Motor	–	21.4 ± 9.3	21.1 ± 10.0	22.0 ± 9.5	20.7 ± 7.0
H&Y stage,	–	1.8 ± 0.4	1.7 ± 0.4	1.9 ± 0.4^d*	1.9 ± 0.4^c*
MMSE	29.0 ± 1.3	26.8 ± 2.8^b**	27.0 ± 2.5	26.6 ± 3.4	27.0 ± 2.0
MoCA	27.5 ± 2.0	25.1 ± 3.5^b**	25.3 ± 3.3	24.5 ± 3.6	25.6 ± 4.2
Plasma NfL, pg/ml	8.8 ± 3.4	16.2 ± 7.6^b**	15.8 ± 7.0	15.8 ± 7.1	18.2 ± 10.3

Abbreviations: PD Parkinson’s Disease; HC Healthy Control; TD Tremor-Dominant; PIGD Postural Instability Gait Disorder; LEDD Levodopa Equivalent Dose; MDS-UPDRS Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale; ADL Activities of Daily Living; H&Y stage Hoehn and Yahr stage; MMSE Mini Mental State Examination; MoCA Montreal Cognitive Assessment; NfL Neurofilament light chain protein.^a Continuous variables reported as mean ± standard deviation; Categorical variables reported as n (%)
* P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01 using Analysis of variance for continuous variables; Chi-squared test for categorical variable for comparisons of variables between ^a PD and HC, ^c TD, PIGD and Indeterminate subtypes, ^d TD and PIGD subtypes

ISSN: 1750-1326