Fluency in Parkinson’s disease: disease duration, cognitive status and age

The objective of this study was to determine the frequency of occurrence and to characterize the typology of dysfluencies in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), including the variables age, gender, schooling, disease duration, score on the Hoehn and Yahr scale and cognitive status (score on Mini-Mental State Examination). A cross-sectional study of a sample comprising 60 adults matched for gender, age and schooling was conducted. Group I comprised 30 adults with idiopathic PD, and Group II comprised 30 healthy adults. For assessment of fluency of speech, subjects were asked to utter a narrative based on a sequence of drawings and a transcription of 200 fluent syllables was performed to identify speech dysfluencies. PD patients exhibited a higher overall number of dysfluencies in speech with a large number of atypical dysfluencies. Additionally, results showed an influence of the variables cognitive status, disease duration and age on occurrence of dysfluencies.

本研究旨在明确帕金森病（Parkinson’s disease, PD）患者言语流畅障碍的发生频率，并对其类型学特征进行刻画，同时纳入年龄、性别、受教育程度、病程、Hoehn-Yahr分期量表（Hoehn and Yahr scale）评分以及认知状态（简易精神状态检查量表（Mini-Mental State Examination）评分）作为考察变量。本研究为横断面研究，纳入按性别、年龄及受教育程度匹配的60名成年人作为研究样本。其中第1组包含30名特发性帕金森病患者，第2组包含30名健康成年人。为评估言语流畅性，要求受试者基于一组图画讲述一段叙事性话语，随后对200个流畅音节的转录文本进行分析，以此识别言语流畅障碍。研究结果显示，帕金森病患者的言语流畅障碍总数量显著更高，且存在大量非典型言语流畅障碍。此外，结果表明认知状态、病程与年龄这三个变量对言语流畅障碍的发生存在影响。