Patients with scans without evidence of dopaminergic deficit: A long-term follow-up study.

The more information we get on SWEDDs the better....

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.26018/full

Mov Disord. 2014 Oct 28. doi: 10.1002/mds.26018. [Epub ahead of print]

Batla A, Erro R, Stamelou M, Schneider SA, Schwingenschuh P, Ganos C, Bhatia KP.

BACKGROUND:

We previously reported on a cohort of dystonic tremor and patients with scans without evidence of dopaminergic deficit (SWEDDs). We aim to report the long-term clinical and imaging follow-up of these patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS:

Patients with at least 5-year follow-up were included. These patients had an asymmetric arm tremor, a previous diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD), and a subsequent normal DaTscan. The imaging and clinical follow-up was done on the clinical basis.

RESULTS:

Sixteen patients were included. The mean gap between the first and subsequent scans was 5.4 years. Two patients (12.5%) had reduced nigrostriatal uptake on follow-up DaTscan, whereas 14 continued to have normal dopaminergic imaging.

CONCLUSION:

This is the longest follow up of patients with asymmetric rest tremor and normal DaT scans (SWEDDs) reported to date. We show here that only a minority of them show reduced striatonigral uptake over long term follow up.