Brain Bank Questionnaire Helps in Differential Diagnosis of Movement Disorders: An Autopsy Study of 150 Patients.

BACKGROUND

As part of the CurePSP brain donation program, a questionnaire was developed to gather basic clinical information on donors; however, its usefulness has not been evaluated.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the value of information obtained from the questionnaire in differentiating between parkinsonian disorders.

METHODS

We reviewed 150 questionnaires, including 50 patients, each with a neuropathologic diagnosis of Lewy body disease (LBD), multiple system atrophy (MSA), or progressive supranuclear palsy. The frequency of clinical features recorded in the questionnaires was compared for the three disorders, and a machine learning algorithm was used to identify features predicting neuropathologic diagnosis.

RESULTS

The information from the questionnaires correlated with core clinical features for each disorder, such as hallucinations for LBD and autonomic dysfunction for MSA. Hallucinations and disorientations were identified as the key variables that contributed most to the prediction of neuropathology.

CONCLUSION

The questionnaire provides useful clinical information for clinicopathological correlative studies.