Exploring Speech Profiles in Parkinson's Disease Patients on Long - Term Dopaminergic Medication

Hypokinetic dysarthria (HD), prevalent in Parkin-son's disease (PD), is characterized by reduced motor movement, leading to speech and voice impairments. The effectiveness of dopamine therapy varies, and symptoms may change over time. To explore the HD in patients on medication, we conducted hierarchical clustering to categorize 83 PD patients using the acoustic features extracted from recorded text reading, sustained phonation, and diadochokinetic task. We then compared these clusters to a group of 44 healthy controls. Regardless of the medication dosage and PD duration, patients displayed three distinct speech profiles: articulatory; respiratory-prosodic; and another more complex/severe regarding the number of HD do-mains affected. The newly identified profiles exhibit distinctions from previously defined speech subtypes in de novo PD patients. No differences in clinical scores were observed among the newly identified profiles, suggesting uniformity in clinical presentation despite distinct speech characteristics.