Trial reportJournal of Parkinson's disease2020
Value of Clinical Signs in Identifying Patients with Scans without Evidence of Dopaminergic Deficit (SWEDD).
Trial report in Journal of Parkinson's disease, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- A monoclonal antibody-based immunoassay reinforces DOPA decarboxylase in cerebrospinal fluid as a diagnostic biomarker for Parkinson's disease with potential prognostic value.Journal of Parkinson's disease · 2026Article
- Unexpected (Journal of neurology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 7 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn clinical trials that recruited patients with early Parkinson's disease (PD), 4-15% of the participants with a clinical diagnosis of PD had normal dopamine transporter single photon emission computed tomography (DAT SPECT) scans, also called "scans without evidence of dopaminergic deficit" (SWEDD).
objectiveTo investigate in patients with a clinical diagnosis of PD, if specific clinical features are useful to distinguish patients with nigrostriatal degeneration from those that have no nigrostriatal degeneration.
methodsWe performed a diagnostic test accuracy study. Patients that participated in the Levodopa in Early Parkinson's disease trial, a clinical trial in patients with early PD, were asked to participate if they had not undergone DAT SPECT imaging earlier. The index tests were specific clinical features that were videotaped. A panel of six neurologists in training (NT), six general neurologists (GN), and six movement disorders experts (MDE) received a batch of ten videos consisting of all SWEDD subjects and a random sample of patients with abnormal DAT SPECT scans. The raters analyzed the videos for presence of specific signs and if they suspected the patient to have SWEDD. The reference test was visually assessed DAT SPECT imaging.
resultsOf a total of 87 participants, three subjects were SWEDDs (3.4%). The overall intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of the Parkinsonian signs was poor to moderate with ICCs ranging from 0.14 to 0.67. NT correctly identified 50.0% of the SWEDD subjects, GN 33.3%, and MDE 66.7%.
conclusionOur study suggests that the selected videotaped clinical features cannot reliably distinguish patients with a clinical diagnosis of PD and an abnormal DAT SPECT from patients with clinical PD and a SWEDD.
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