Independent Validation of the SEND-PD and Correlation with the MDS-UPDRS Part IA

Introduction. Neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson's disease can be assessed by the MDS-UPDRS part IA. The Scale for Evaluation of Neuropsychiatric Disorders in Parkinson's disease (SEND-PD) has been recently developed to assess the severity of some neuropsychiatric symptoms. The objective of this study is to compare the performance of the SEND-PD with the corresponding items of the MDS-UPDRS part IA. Methods. Patients with Parkinson's disease were evaluated using the MDS-UPDRS and the SEND-PD by independent raters. Partial SEND-PD and neuropsychiatric MDS-UPDRS part IA were constructed with equivalent items for comparison. Results. A total of 260 consecutive patients were included. Overall, 61.2% of the patients did not report any psychotic symptom and 83.5% did not report any ICD symptom. On the other hand, 78.5% of the patients did report at least one symptom related to apathy, depression, or anxiety. The partial SEND-PD score was 2.9 ± 3.1 (range from 0 to 16). The neuropsychiatric MDS-UPDRS part IA score was 2.9 ± 3 (range from 0 to 14). The correlation coefficient between corresponding items ranged from 0.67 to 0.98 and between both summary indexes was r s = 0.93 (all, P < 0.001). Conclusion. A high association between equivalent items of the SEND-PD and the MDS-UPDRS was found.