Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale

1 Definition

The Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) is the most widely-used scale for multicenter clinical trials in Parkinson's disease. The scale itself consists of four parts that were developed by movement disorder specialists: Part I - Mentation, Behavior and Mood; Part II - Activities of Daily Living; Part III - Motor; Part IV - Complications. A recent Movement Disorder Society (MDS) task force evaluated this scale and found strengths of the UPDRS include its wide utilization, its application across the clinical spectrum of PD, its nearly comprehensive coverage of motor symptoms, and its clinimetric properties, including reliability and validity. Weaknesses include several ambiguities in the written text, inadequate instructions for raters, some metric flaws, and the absence of screening questions on several important non-motor aspects of PD. Recently, a new updated version called the MDS-UPDRS has been released.