Time of Loss of Employment in Parkinson's Disease

We examined time to loss of employment in two U.K.-based studies of 151 and 308 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with onset age before 65 years. Fifty-two percent and 57% of patients had retired early due to PD, 18% and 5% of patients were unemployed, and 8% and 11% were part-time-employed. Mean age of retirement was 55.8 years compared to an average retirement age of 62 years in the U.K. population. Mean time to loss of employment was 4.9 years, ranging from a mean of 6.7 years in those with onset before age 45 to 1.7 years in those with onset after age 56, but the range was large (0-17 years). After censoring for those still working and those retiring at a normal retirement age, survival analysis revealed that 46% had stopped working after a disease duration of 5 years and 82% after 10 years with a median survival to loss of employment of 6.0 (95% CI: 5.4-6.6) years. Age of onset correlated negatively with time to loss of employment (r = -0.6; P < 0.001). There were no differences between sexes, rural vs. urban living, types of work, those living alone or with a partner, and those with and without children in their household. We conclude that Parkinson's disease leads to loss of employment on average within less than 10 years of disease onset. However, the variability of time to loss of employment is large, indicating that other factors than onset age and disease duration influence loss of patients' employment.