Assessment of manual motor performance in Parkinson's disease

The purpose of our study was to assess manual motor performance in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by means of simple instrumental timed tests and compare these findings with normative data. Ninety seven right-handed PD patients and 80 matched controls participated in the study. Motor dexterity was assessed by means of the following instruments: 1) Tapping board, 2) Dual Tally, and 3) Purdue Pegboard. PD patients performed worse than normal controls in all instrumental timed tests (p = 0.0001). However this difference was not always maintained in the group of PD patients who were older than 71 years.Finally we explored the relationship between motor disability and instrumental test scores in a subgroup of PD patients who were younger than 70 years. A negative correlation between UPDRS score and instrumental test scores was significant for all tests. ANOVA exploration of the differences in instrumental test scores between different stages of the disease showed significant differences for Tapping Board, Dual Tally left, Purdue Pegboard at 15 sec bilateral and Purdue Pegboard at 30 sec right. Performance in these tests deteriorated as stage progressed.Our findings indicate that the instrumental timed tests studied can be used reliably for manual motor performance assessment in PD patients under the age of 70 year