Odor Identification Function Differs between Vascular Parkinsonism and Akinetic-Type Parkinson’s Disease

Objective: Main clinical features of vascular parkinsonism (VP) are rigidity, fixed face, and short stepping gait. VP remains difficult to diagnose based on clinical features from patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) without rest tremor. Olfactory dysfunction is a non-motor symptom in idiopathic PD. We investigated whether olfactory function can distinguish VP from PD. Method: Participants were comprised of 13 patients with VP, 40 non-demented patients with akinetic-type PD, and 40 age-matched controls. Olfactory function was examined using the Odor Stick Identification Test for Japanese (OSIT-J), which evaluates the detection of 12 odorants familiar to Japanese participants. Results: Corrected odor identification scores in OSIT-J were 8.2 ± 1.5 (mean ± SD) points in patients with VP, 3.2 ± 2.5 in PD patients, and 7.1 ± 3.0 in normal subjects. These were significantly higher in VP than those in PD patients (p<0.001), but were not different from those in normal subjects. Conclusion: The olfactory identification test is non-invasive, convenient, and useful to distinguish VP from PD as a screening test. Figure 1: T2 weighted brain MRI showed multiple lacunar infarcts in basal ganglia regions (right), or ischemic white matter changes (left). *Corresponding author: Mutsumi Iijima, Department of Neurology, Tokyo Women’s Medical University School of Medicine, 8-1 Kawada-cho Shinjuku, Tokyo 162–8666, Japan, Tel: +813–3353–8111; E-mail: [email protected] Received January 08, 2016; Accepted January 22, 2016; Published January 29, 2016 Citation: Iijima M, Osawa M, Uchiyama S, Kitagawa K (2016) Odor Identification Function Differs between Vascular Parkinsonism and Akinetic-Type Parkinson’s Disease. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6: 207. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000207 Copyright: © 2016 Iijima M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ranging in age from 63 to 83 (mean ± SD; 75.6 ± 6.1) years. Diagnosis of VP was done by the following the three criteria [2,3], 1. Clinical features were bradykinesia (slowness of initiation of voluntary movement with progressive reduction in aped and amplitude of repetitive actions in either upper limb or lower limb, including the presence of reduced step length) and at least one of the following; muscle rigidity, rest tremor, or postural instability, 2. Brain MRI findings showed multiple lacunar infarcts in basal ganglia regions, or /and ischemic white matter changes (Figure 1), 3. Patients with PSP, MSA and drug-induced parkinsonism Citation: Iijima M, Osawa M, Uchiyama S, Kitagawa K (2016) Odor Identification Function Differs between Vascular Parkinsonism and Akinetic-Type Parkinson’s Disease. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6: 207. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000207