Pegboard tests are an effective way to assess the progression of upper-extremity motor deficits in patients with early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD), according to a research letter from Sebastian Heitzel, PhD, and his associates.
As part of the prospective MODEP study, motor performance of early-stage PD patients, midstage PD patients, and a healthy control group were assessed biannually over a 4-year period using the pegboard test. E-PD and M-PD patients performed significantly worse on all pegboard tasks than did people in the control group.
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Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale part III scores worsened in E-PD patients, compared with controls, but slightly improved in M-PD patients.
“Pegboard is cost- and time-effective, does not require medically trained staff, and provides objective and reliable markers of upper-extremity motor deficits,” the investigators noted.
Find the full research letter in Movement Disorders (2017. doi: 10.1002/mds.27062).