Objective: To determine whether a brief battery of commonly used clinical performance tests can predict disability in activities of daily living measured by UPDRS II in people with Parkinson disease.
Background: Disability in activities of daily living is a major determinant of functional independence and quality of life in Parkinson disease. The Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale Part II UPDRS II is widely used to assess this disability in clinical practice. However comprehensive functional assessments can be time consuming and difficult to implement in routine care. Brief performance based clinical assessments may offer a pragmatic approach to estimate disability and support clinical decision making.
Method: An observational cross sectional study was conducted using clinical data from 309 individuals with idiopathic Parkinson disease across Hoehn and Yahr stages 1 to 5. Disability in activities of daily living was assessed using UPDRS II. Predictor variables included commonly used clinical tests evaluating mobility balance manual dexterity and cognition. Gradient boosting regression models were applied to estimate UPDRS II disability scores with internal cross validation and independent hold out validation to assess model performance.
Results: The model demonstrated good predictive performance in the development dataset MAE 2.56 RMSE 3.32 R² 0.84 and moderate performance in the independent hold out dataset MAE 4.60 RMSE 6.04 R² 0.43. The predicted score showed high discriminative accuracy for distinguishing mild versus moderate disability AUC 0.94 in the development dataset and 0.83 in the hold out dataset. Motor balance dexterity and cognitive measures contributed to the prediction of UPDRS II disability.
Conclusion: Disability in activities of daily living measured by UPDRS II can be estimated using a brief battery of performance based clinical tests. This approach may support rapid functional screening and facilitate rehabilitation oriented clinical decision making in PD.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
R. Dias, G. Santos, P. Silva, M. Pimentel Piemonte. A Brief Clinical Test Battery Predicting UPDRS II Disability in Parkinson Disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2026; 41 (suppl 1). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/a-brief-clinical-test-battery-predicting-updrs-ii-disability-in-parkinson-disease/. Accessed October 1, 2026.« Back to 2026 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/a-brief-clinical-test-battery-predicting-updrs-ii-disability-in-parkinson-disease/