The potential of electromyography signals as markers to detect and monitor Parkinson's disease

Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that causes the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. The imbalance in dopamine production causes motoric disorder that can produce specific electrical signal that can be detected by electromyography. Some methods were developed to diagnose PD and the use of a questionnaire and clinical observation was widely used to diagnose the disease. The limitation of the methods includes the fact that there are some differences in assessment results from clinicians due to the need of experience. The use of electromyography hopefully can obtain an objective assessment that can be easily used by clinicians. Some studies showed differences between normal muscle electric-activity compared to PD related abnormal muscle electric activity. Some methods were developed to use electromyography as a tool to diagnose PD related motoric symptoms, such as rigidity, gait abnormality and tremor. The use of electric signals, which are produce in muscle contraction, as markers to diagnose PD, as well as to monitor complications and the effect of therapy hopefully can be developed. In this review article, we will discuss about the use of electromyography signals that are related to PD. Therefore we will explain about basics of electromyography, the use of electromyography signals to detect tremor and gait abnormalities in PD, the use of electromyography for monitoring PD patients.