Accelerometric assessment of tardive dyskinesia.

Accelerometric measures associated with resting the hand, posturing the arm, and moving the arm were taken in 10 patients with tardive dyskinesia and eight schizophrenic patients matched for diagnosis, age, sex, likelihood of medication to induce extrapyramidal symptoms, and chlorpromazine-equivalent dose. A multivariate analysis of variance and follow-up univariate analyses revealed that the tardive dyskinesia patients showed 1) greater amplitude of dyskinetic movements, 2) lower peak frequency of dyskinetic movements, and 3) more spikes-points beyond four standard deviations from the mean. Multiple discriminant analyses revealed that all patients were correctly classified as to presence or absence of tardive dyskinesia.