IntroductionIndividuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) have to deal with several aspects of voice and speech decline and thus alteration of communication ability during the course of the disease. Among these communication impairments, 3 major challenges include: (1) dysarthria, consisting of orofacial motor dysfunction and dysprosody, which is linked to the neurodegenerative processes; (2) effects of the pharmacological treatment, which vary according to the disease stage; and (3) particular speech modifications that may be language-specific, that is, dependent on the language spoken by the patients. The main objective of the FraLusoPark project is to provide a thorough evaluation of changes in PD speech as a result of pharmacological treatment and disease duration in 2 different languages (French vs European Portuguese).Methods and analysisIndividuals with PD are enrolled in the study in France (N=60) and Portugal (N=60). Their global motor disability and orofacial motor functions is assessed with specific clinical rating scales, without (OFF) and with (ON) pharmacological treatment. 2 groups of 60 healthy age-matched volunteers provide the reference for between-group comparisons. Along with the clinical examinations, several speech tasks are recorded to obtain acoustic and perceptual measures. Patient-reported outcome measures are used to assess the psychosocial impact of dysarthria on quality of life.Ethics and disseminationThe study has been approved by the local responsible committees on human experimentation and is conducted in accordance with the ethical standards. A valuable large-scale database of speech recordings and metadata from patients with PD in France and Portugal will be constructed. Results will be disseminated in several articles in peer-reviewed journals and in conference presentations. Recommendations on how to assess speech and voice disorders in individuals with PD to monitor the progression and management of symptoms will be provided.Trial registration numberNCT02753192, Pre-results.
Hypokinetic dysarthria is a common symptom in those with Parkinson's disease (PD); there is currently no standardized or validated tool for assessing speech in this population. To translate into European Portuguese (EP) the FDA-2 and perform a cultural adaptation followed by an evaluation of its psychometric properties in PD in a sample of people with PD in different stages of disease progression. Translation, back-translation, experts' analysis, pre-test and final version test were performed. The EP version of the FDA-2 was administered to 80 people with PD (PwP) with dysarthria, feasibility and acceptability, reliability (internal consistency and inter-rater reliability) and validity (face and convergent) were measured. Overall, the EP-FDA-2 proved to be similar to the original demonstrating the same conceptual meanings, semantics, idiomatic and score equivalences. It has good feasibility (missing data <5 %), acceptability (ceiling and floor effects <15 %), a high reliability of the total score (0.94), an excellent inter-rater agreement for the total score (0.96) and moderate to large construct validity for 81 % of its items. It is well correlated with the gold standard for disease severity assessment in PD, the MDS-UPDRS. The EP-FDA-2 has shown the salient features of a valid tool that can be used by speech and language therapists in the assessment of dysarthria in PD in clinical practice as in the research field.
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