Quantification of treatment effects in Parkinsonian rest tremor

Introduction: Rest tremor is a cardinal symptom of Parkinson's disease, causing functional impairment in few, but social stigma and consecutive disability in many patients. Despite the need for tremorlytic drugs few clinical trials have used tremor reduction as the primary outcome criterion, because the assessment of rest tremor on standard rating scales may be unreliable and confounded by the fluctuating symptom severity. Long-term tremor recordings using portable EMG devices provide an objective measurement of tremor over time but are difficult to handle. Here, we assess the validity and practicality of a comm…