The effect of 8 weeks of treatment with transcranial pulsed electromagnetic fields on hand tremor and inter-hand coherence in persons with Parkinson's disease.

This report used a subsample of the randomized trial, so the tremor analyses included fewer participants than the full trial. Three participants with both rest and postural tremor had missing endpoint data because of withdrawal or exclusion for low compliance or medication change, and all three had received T-PEMF. One participant with postural tremor only did not attend the endpoint assessment. The positive coherence finding appeared only after the main analysis was null and only in the unilateral postural tremor subgroup. The healthy reference group was adjusted by excluding six women to match the Parkinson's group on age and sex distribution. Tremor intensity is sensitive to stress, attention, and placebo effects, so a real effect on tremor intensity may have been masked. The UPDRS was used instead of the MDS-UPDRS because a validated Danish version was not available.

Funding was provided by Den A. P. Møllerkse Støttefond and Grosserer LF Foghts Fond.

Do not read the reduction in inter-hand coherence in the unilateral postural tremor subgroup as evidence that T-PEMF improves Parkinson's hand tremor. The trial found no difference between T-PEMF and placebo for tremor intensity, peak power, peak frequency, or coherence when all participants were analysed.