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We read with great interest the report by Batemanet al on sleep benefit in Parkinson's disease.1 The authors state that no objective study has been undertaken about sleep benefit. We must object to that, as our group has recently published an extensive objective study about sleep benefit, which includes objective motor examinations, levodopa plasma concentration determinations, and polysomnographies.2Moreover, we would like to briefly discuss some of the authors′ findings in the light of our own results.
The authors studied 20 patients with the motor part of the UPDRS, at waking (apparently twice), and after medication during “on” and “off”. At each rating, the patients completed an “activities of daily living” (ADL) questionnaire. The authors also administered ADL questionnaires to heterogenous groups of outpatients.
In their results, the authors comment on six out of 16 patients of the first series: “When they awoke these patients performed as well as when they were “on” due to medication”. Unfortunately, they give no data at all, such as mean UPDRS scores and ranges, for baseline state and “on” time schedules and hours of the ratings. Furthermore, no information is provided to account for the remaining four patients who were included in the first series but do not appear in the results.
The findings by Bateman et al contrast with our own results, in that patients with sleep benefit performed only slightly better in the morning compared with those without. A clear “on” compared with baseline was …