Low specificity and sensitivity of smell identification testing for the diagnosis of Parkinson?s disease

• Autor(a) principal: Rodríguez-Violante,Mayela
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Gonzalez-Latapi,Paulina, Camacho-Ordoñez,Azyadeh, Martínez-Ramírez,Daniel, Morales-Briceño,Hugo, Cervantes-Arriaga,Amin
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2014000100033
• topic: Parkinson?s disease; University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test; olfaction; diagnostic test

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine if the University of Pennsylvania’s Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) is an accurate diagnostic tool for olfactory dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Method: We included 138 non-demented PD subjects and 175 control subjects matched by gender. Smell identification was tested using UPSIT. Results: The mean number of UPSIT items correctly identified by controls was 27.52±5.88; the mean score for PD subjects was 19.66±6.08 (p=<0.001). UPSIT sensitivity was 79.7% with a specificity of 68.5% using a cut-off score of ≤25. The overall accuracy for the diagnosis of PD was of 75.3%. Conclusion: UPSIT accuracy and specificity were lower than what has been previously reported. Our data demonstrates that 17.5% of items of the UPSIT were not well identified by healthy controls. Further research of the identification of a truly cross-cultural test is warranted.