Sex differences in motor unit behavior in patients with parkinson's diseaseNishikawa, Yuichi (Avtor) Watanabe, Kohei (Avtor) Holobar, Aleš (Avtor) Takahashi, Tetsuya (Avtor) Maeda, Noriaki (Avtor) Maruyama, Hirofumi (Avtor) Hyngstrom, Allison S (Avtor) electromyographyParkinson's diseassex differencemotor unitThe aim of this study was to determine whether there are sex differences in motor unit firing behavior in patients with Parkinson'sdisease. Twenty-seven patients with Parkinson's disease (females = 14 [age = 71.1 ± 6.8], males = 13 [age = 69.2 ± 10.3], UnifiedParkinson's Disease Rating Scale Part III score; females = 10.8 ± 4.8, males = 11.4 ± 1.4) performed a contraction at 30% of themaximal voluntary contraction. For each participant, motor unit spike trains were decomposed from high- density surface elec-tromyography data recorded from bilateral vastus lateralis muscles via blind source separation algorithms. In addition to themean discharge rates, persistent inward currents were estimated via a paired motor unit analysis. Females presented signifi-cantly greater laterality of discharge rate (p = 0.001) and persistent inward currents (p = 0.0121) than males. A significant corre-lation was observed between the discharge rate and the recruitment threshold on the bilateral side of males and the less-affectedside of females but not on the more-affected side of females. These findings indicate that sex differences in motor unit behaviorexist in Parkinson's disease patients. Motor unit behavior may be a sensitive and quantitative evaluation tool to highlight differ-ences in disease presentation between males and females.Wiley20252026-03-18 16:14:16Članek v reviji97549sl© 2025 The Author(s)