Comparison of acoustic measures of dysphonia in Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease: Effect of sex and speaking task

Abstract

This study investigated whether voice quality is differentially affected in two distinct basal ganglia disorders causing hypokinetic and hyperkinetic dysarthria, including effects of gender and speaking task. The sustained vowel phonations and monologues of 40 de novo Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, 40 Huntington's disease (HD) patients, and 40 healthy control participants were evaluated. Using cepstral peak prominence extracted from sustained phonation, differences from controls were found for male and female HD patients (p < 0.05) but only male PD patients (p < 0.05). Using the glottal-to-noise excitation ratio obtained from monologue, differences from controls were detected for male and female PD groups (p < 0.05) but only male HD group (p < 0.05). In general, female patients show better voice quality. Our findings highlight that selecting suitable acoustic measures and speaking material is essential for adequate evaluation of dysphonia severity across differing etiologies.