Objective: To establish whether there is a possible link between the motor symptoms, which includes RBD in PD patients in this study, who have mild/moderate microsmia, severe microsmia or anosmia (as measured by the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT)).

Background: Motor symptoms, which also include Rapid Eye Movement Behaviour Disorder (RBD) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) substantially affect patients and carers quality of life. There is also good research evidence that the ability to smell is significantly affected in PD compared to the general population.

Methods: This is an open cross-sectional study involving 112 PD patients (of both genders). Motor symptoms were measured using the motor rating subscales in the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-III), and rapid eye movement behaviour disorder (RBD) was assessed using the RBD Screening Questionnaire. 

Results: Overall there is a very weak negative correlation r=-0.1192 which is not statistically significant between the motor function score and sense of smell score.  However, when examining the individual domains of the UPDRS motor scores against UPSIT scores, correlation is significant in posture (= -.231 p=.014) facial expression (=-.207 p=.029) and arising from a chair (=-.190 p=.045) and is close to being significant in motor domains hand movements (=-.166 p=.080) and speech (=-.166 p=.085) Analysis between UPSIT and RBD scores confirmed this was not statistically significant ( = -.021 p=0.823).

Conclusions: The findings of this study conclude that   individual motor domains may be linked to the degree of smell loss rather than the motor symptoms as a whole. It also confirms RBD does not correlate with sense of smell loss.  Therefore, determining a PD patient sense of smell with a simple bed side test at the outset may help to provide important information as to the range of clinical features that are likely to be encountered in this patient. It may also help to provide very important prognostic information in this person; this can only help in our understanding of PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/motor-performance-measured-with-the-updrs-in-pd-patientswith-varying-degrees-of-smell-loss/