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It has been shown recently that male patients with Parkinson’s disease who have testosterone deficiency may have symptoms resembling non-motor parkinsonian symptoms.12 Because of the similarity between the non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and the symptoms of testosterone deficiency, clinicians may fail to recognise and treat testosterone deficiency in patients with Parkinson’s disease.1 The identification of testosterone deficiency may have a significant impact on the long term course of the disease, as symptoms mistakenly labelled as non-motor parkinsonian manifestations could be relieved more effectively by testosterone replacement than by other treatments.
In this study we examined the prevalence of testosterone deficiency and testosterone deficiency symptoms among a group of patients with Parkinson’s disease presenting to our movement disorders clinic, to assess how common undiagnosed symptomatic testosterone deficiency was in this population. A mail-back survey was administered to all the patients seen in the clinic after a 12 month period where patients were seen, examined, and entered into a database. The surveys were returned by 91 of 137 male patients with Parkinson’s disease (66%). The diagnosis of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease was confirmed by a movement disorders specialist who applied the …