Specific intranasal and central trigeminal electrophysiological responses in Parkinson’s disease

Olfactory dysfunction is a frequent early non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD). There is evidence that with regard to trigeminal perception, PD-related olfactory dysfunction is different from other olfactory disorders. More specifically, trigeminal sensitivity, when measured behaviorally, was unimpaired in PD patients as opposed to patients with non-Parkinsonian olfactory dysfunction (NPOD). We sought to investigate the trigeminal pathway by measuring electrophysiological recordings from the nasal epithelium and EEG-derived event-related potentials in response to a specific trigeminal stimulus in 21 PD patients and compare them to 23 patients with NPOD and 25 controls (C). The peripheral trigeminal response, as measured by the negative-mucosa potential, showed no difference between patients with PD and controls whereas PD patients showed faster responses than patients with NPOD, the latter having shown slower and larger responses than controls (18 PD, 14 NPOD, 20 C). The central trigeminal response, as measured by event-related potentials, revealed larger early component response in PD patients compared to patients with NPOD (15 PD, 21 NPOD, 23 C). As expected, psychophysical olfactory testing showed impaired olfactory function in both groups of patients as opposed to controls. Discriminant analysis revealed a model that could predict group membership for 80% of participants based on the negative-mucosa potential latency, olfactory threshold and discrimination tests. These results provide novel insights into the pattern of trigeminal activation in PD which will help to differentiate PD-related olfactory loss from NPOD, a crucial step towards establishing early screening batteries for PD including smell tests.