Motor and Non-motor Features: Differences between Patients with Isolated Essential Tremor and Patients with Both Essential Tremor and Parkinson's Disease

• Main Authors: Apostolia Ghika, Andreas Kyrozis, Constantinos Potagas, Elan D. Louis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ubiquity Press 2015-08-01
• Series: Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements
• Online Access: https://tremorjournal.org/index.php/tremor/article/view/335

<p><strong>Background: </strong>Patients with<strong> </strong>essential tremor (ET) who develop Parkinson&rsquo;s disease (ET-&gt;PD) may differ with respect to motor features (MFs) and non-motor features (NMFs) from patients with isolated ET. Few studies have assessed this issue.<strong></strong></p> <p><strong>Methods: </strong>In this retrospective chart review, we analyzed data on MFs and NMFs of 175 patients, including 54 ET-&gt;PD and 121 ET, actively followed in the Athens University 1^st Neurology Department.</p> <p><strong>Results: </strong>Significantly more ET-&gt;PD than ET patients reported asymmetric tremor at ET onset (68.5% vs. 14.9%, p&lt;0.001). &nbsp;Significantly more ET than ET-&gt;PD patients had head tremor (43.5% vs. 13.2%, p&lt;0.001) and cerebellar signs (41.3% vs. 9.3%, p&lt;0.001). More ET than ET-&gt;PD patients reported hearing impairment (65.3% vs. 28.3%, p&lt;0.001) and restless legs syndrome (34.8% vs. 3.7%, p&lt;0.001). Conversely, a larger proportion of ET-&gt;PD than ET patients reported rapid eye movement behavior disorder (51.9% vs. 10.0%, p&lt;0.001), constipation (67.9% vs. 36.4%, p&lt;0.001), and olfactory dysfunction (83.3% vs. 36.4%, p&lt;0.001).</p> <p><strong>Discussion: </strong>The subset of ET-&gt;PD patients may have distinct MFs and NMFs that should be assessed further for the possible predictive value for the emergence of PD.<strong></strong></p> <p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>