Assessment of symptoms of Parkinson's disease by apparative methods.

Established clinical scores assessing the severity of Parkinson's disease show high specificity but only low interrater reliability. Using them in therapy control in multicenter studies raises typical problems. We examined the MLS, a motor performance test, in an extended form including assessment of "tapping" regularity for its practicability in therapy control of Parkinson's disease. Assessing a group of right-handed healthy controls we obtained parameters which describe normal motor dexterity by mean values, standard deviations, age relationship and correlation between left and right hand. This method is thus a good tool for estimation of abnormalities in motor dexterity. In therapy control the comparison of results obtained before and after treatment allows a good objective evaluation of the therapeutic success.