Abstract
Background:Essential tremor (ET) is the most common adult movement disorder, characterized by several motor and increasingly well recognized non-motor symptoms. Sensory deficits, such as hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction, are amongst them. This review analyzes the available evidence of these sensory deficits and their possible mechanistic basis in patients with ET.Method:A PubMed literature search on the topic was performed in the May 2019 database.Results:Nineteen articles on hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction in ET patients were identified. The prevalence of hearing impairment is higher in ET patients than healthy controls or Parkinson disease. Cochlear pathologies are suggested as the underlying cause, but there is still a lack of information about retrocochlear pathologies and central auditory processing. Reports on olfactory dysfunction have conflicting results. The presence of mild olfactory dysfunction in ET was suggested. Conflicting results may be due to the lack of consideration of the disease’s heterogeneity, but according to recent data, most studies do not find prominent evidence of olfactory loss in ET.Conclusion:Although there is increasing interest in studies on non-motor symptoms in ET, there are few studies on sensory deficits, which are of particularly high prevalence. More studies are needed on to investigate the basis of non-motor symptoms, including sensory deficits.
Highlights
Essential tremor (ET) is one of the most common movement disorders and the most common cause of tremor in adult life
Hearing impairment is associated with cognitive decline, depression, increased risk of dementia, poor balance, falls, hospitalizations, and early mortality [13]
The results showed that olfactory testing by UPSIT or Olfactory event-related potentials (OERPs) was normal in ET, the scores of non-familial ET were lower than healthy controls (HCs), it was not statistically significant and there was a marked difference between ET and tremor-dominant PD
Summary
Essential tremor (ET) is one of the most common movement disorders and the most common cause of tremor in adult life. Hearing impairment and especially olfactory dysfunction have long been associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, spinocerebellar ataxias, and motor neuron disease [10,11,12]. Essential tremor (ET) is the most common adult movement disorder, characterized by several motor and increasingly well recognized non-motor symptoms. Sensory deficits, such as hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction, are amongst them. Results: Nineteen articles on hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction in ET patients were identified. More studies are needed on to investigate the basis of non-motor symptoms, including sensory deficits
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