Improvement by Medication Less than Expected in Parkinson’s Disease: Blinded Evaluation of Levodopa Response

Table 2

Demographic data for PD with LDCT over and under 30% improvement.

Variable	PD LDCT ≤ 30% (n = 21)	PD LDCT > 30% (n = 16)	value
Age (y)	65	67	0.591
No. of men/women (%)	12/9 (57.1, 42.9)	10/6 (62.5, 37.5)	1.000
Age at symptom onset (y)	57	57.5	0.771
Age at time of diagnosis (y)	61	60.5	0.976
Disease duration after onset of symptoms (y)	7	11	0.528
Disease duration after diagnosis (y)	5	7.5	0.076
Education (y)	17	15	0.042
MoCA score	27	27	0.596

PD LDCT ≤30%, PD acute levodopa challenge test with a change less than or equal to 30% improvement of UPDRS III; PD LDCT >30%, PD acute levodopa challenge test with more than 30% improvement of UPDRS III; MoCA, Montreal Cognitive Assessment. If participants had ≤12 years of education one point were added to the total MoCA score if < 30 to correct for education effects as recommended by the original validation study [9]. Three PD and three controls had ≤12 years of education and all three PD had 1 point added to their total score but only one control due to a score below 30. The median scores of MoCA for PD groups divided after the measured effect were both 27 ( 0.596). All values are reported as the median (minimum, maximum) or absolute frequency (relative frequency in %).