Stuttered disfluencies in Parkinson's disease: Longitudinal changes.

Authors

Eloïse A Fairbairn, Tracy R Melzer, Toni L Pitcher, Kyla-Louise Horne, Rachel Nolan, Sophie Grenfell, Leslie Livingston, John C Dalrymple-Alford, Tim Anderson, Megan J McAuliffe, Catherine Theys

Published in

Journal of fluency disorders. Volume 90. Pages 106262. Oct 17, 2026. Epub Oct 17, 2026.

Abstract

Acquired neurogenic stuttering occurs in approximately 1 in 5 people with Parkinson's disease. It is currently unknown how stuttering changes as the disease progresses.
Examine longitudinal changes in the frequency of stuttered disfluencies in individuals with Parkinson's disease.
We measured stuttered disfluencies in 63 people with Parkinson's disease in conversation, picture description, and reading samples. All participants completed at least two assessment sessions, a mean of 2.9 years (± 1.5) apart. Nineteen completed a third session, and two a fourth. Bayesian hierarchical models were fitted to examine changes in the frequency of stuttered syllables over time for each speech task, accounting for baseline demographic (age, sex) and disease-associated variables (symptom duration, motor functioning, cognition, and medication dosage).
At baseline, the mean frequency of stuttered syllables was 2.1% (±1.4) during conversation, 1.4% (±1.4) during picture description, and 0.6% (±0.8) during reading. At baseline, 18% of participants exceeded a ≥ 3% stuttered disfluencies threshold for stuttering identification, while 38% met this threshold during follow up sessions. The group-level statistical models estimated an annual increase in stuttered disfluencies of 0.1 (95%CI [+0.0, 0.2]) for conversation and 0.2 (95%CI [+0.0, 0.3]) for picture description, but no increase for reading.
Group-level analyses indicated a small but progressive increase in stuttered disfluencies over time in individuals with Parkinson's disease. A subgroup of individuals showed more pronounced increases, exceeding a diagnostic threshold for stuttering. These findings highlight the importance of longitudinal monitoring to enable timely, targeted intervention for those impacted by speech disfluencies.

PMID:
42913065
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.