Clinical Utility of Skin Biopsy in Differentiating between Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple System Atrophy

Table 1

Clinical characteristics of patients with Parkinson’s disease and multiple system atrophy.

	MSA	PD
		Total	Levodopa(+)	Levodopa(−)
	()	()	()	()
Age (yrs)	62.7 ± 8.4	64.1 ± 5.7	64.5 ± 5.5	63.1 ± 6.2
Duration (yrs)	3.0 ± 1.1	4.8 ± 3.2	5.4 ± 3.4	3.2 ± 1.9^†
UPDRSIII	—	20.7 ± 11.3	20.4 ± 12.5	21.3 ± 8.2
Hoehn and Yahr	—	2.4 ± 0.7	2.5 ± 0.7	2.3 ± 0.6
Levodopa dose	92 ± 178	222 ± 177	324 ± 109	0

Data are expressed as the mean ± standard deviation. Levodopa dose was the mean daily dose taken in the last 6 months before skin biopsy.
PD versus MSA: .
^†PD levodopa(+) versus PD levodopa(−): .
MSA: multiple system atrophy; PD: Parkinson’s disease; PD levodopa(+): Parkinson’s disease with exposure to levodopa; PD levodopa(−): Parkinson’s disease naïve to levodopa; UPDRS-III: Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale.