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Mirror movements in Parkinson’s disease: effect of dopaminergic drugs

Toronto Western Research Institute and Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Anthony E Lang
Toronto Western Hospital, Department of Neurology, 399 Bathurst Street, MC 7-413, Toronto, ON, Canada M5T 2S8; lang@uhnres.utoronto.ca

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Mirror movements refer to involuntary movements that emulate voluntary activity in contralateral homologous body regions.¹ We recently described this phenomenon in the less affected limb in early asymmetric parkinsonism.² The effects of time and dopaminergic drugs have not been examined. We now report on the re-evaluation of this clinical sign in a subset of patients with clinically definite Parkinson’s disease who were undergoing dopamine replacement therapy, from our original cohort.

METHODS
We recruited 13 treated patients for this longitudinal assessment from the initial cohort of 27 patients² with suspected mirror movements and recent-onset asymmetric idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, seen at the Movement Disorders Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, between September 2001 and January 2003. At follow–up, all patients had been receiving optimal doses of dopaminergic drugs for many months. Parkinsonian features were combined into axial and lateralised scores using related items of the motor subscale of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). . . . [Full text of this article]