Anxiety and pre-symptomatic testing for neurodegenerative disorders

In this retrospective study we have investigated the anxiety as an impact of pre-symptomatic testing (PST) for 3 autosomal dominant late-onset diseases: Huntington disease (HD), Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) and familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP) V30MTTR. The study included 686 subjects: 586 (85.4%) were the offspring at risk for FAP, 92 (13.4%) for HD and 8 (1.2%) to MJD. Of these, 352 received the carrier result and 305 the non-carrier result. As indicator of anxiety distress was taken the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale of Zung (SAS), applied in the pre-test and the three post-test moments: three weeks, 6 months and one year after notification of test results. Values decreased significantly along the four evaluation moments, regardless the studied disease or test result. For female population, SAS means cores revealed results of clinical anxiety at pre-test, only decreasing to non clinical scores a year after PST disclosure.