Ires Ghielen

85 Longitudinal relationships between anxiety and motor symptoms All analyses were adjusted for treatment allocation and performed with MLwiN (version 3.00). A two-tailed significance level of 0.05 was used. Results Table 1 shows the baseline characteristics of the 153 included PD patients. One patient dropped out 3 weeks after randomization because of a necessary change of drug treatment. Most patients had mild to moderate disease severity. At baseline, 41% of patients had at least weekly freezing episodes, defined by a score >1 on item 3 of the FOGQ and a quarter reported clinically relevant anxiety symptoms, considering the cut-off of 8 on the HADSA [48]. Table 2 shows the mean and standard deviations of the outcome measures over all four time points. For elaborate description of the intervention effects we refer to the study of Nieuwboer and colleagues [24]. Briefly, after receiving the intervention, only patients who experienced at least weekly freezing, reported a reduction in severity of FoG. In the total sample, greater confidence as measured with the FES and no significant changes in anxiety were reported. Table 2. Time-variations in Freezing of Gait, Fear of Falling, and Anxiety outcome measures. Outcome measure Timepoint; Mean (sd) T1 T2 T3 T4 FOGQ [range: 0-24] 8.7 (5.3) 8.2 (5.2) 7.5 (5.1) 8.3 (5.3) FES [range: 0-130] 81.6 (27.9) 84.6 (27.7) 86.9 (27.0) 84.1 (28.6) HADSA [range: 0-21] 6.9 (3.9) 6.5 (3.7) 6.4 (3.8) 6.7 (3.8) Abbreviations: sd = standard deviation; FOGQ = Freezing of Gait Questionnaire; FES = Falls Efficacy Scale; HADSA = Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale – Anxiety. Figure 2 displays the crude analyses results (regression coefficients) of the univariate associations 1) between FoG and FoF, 2) between FoG and anxiety, and the multivariate association 3) between FoG (dependent) and FoF and anxiety (independent variables). All crude associations were positive and significant. 5