Auditory and Olfactory Deficits in Essential Tremor – Review of the Current Evidence

BACKGROUND: Essential tremor (ET) is the most common adult movement disorder, characterized by several motor and increasingly well recognized non-motor symptoms. Sensory deficits, such as hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction, are amongst them. This review analyzes the available evidence of these sensory deficits and their possible mechanistic basis in patients with ET. METHOD: A PubMed literature search on the topic was performed in the May 2019 database. RESULTS: Nineteen articles on hearing impairment and olfactory dysfunction in ET patients were identified. The prevalence of hearing impairment is higher in ET patients than healthy controls or Parkinson disease. Cochlear pathologies are suggested as the underlying cause, but there is still a lack of information about retrocochlear pathologies and central auditory processing. Reports on olfactory dysfunction have conflicting results. The presence of mild olfactory dysfunction in ET was suggested. Conflicting results may be due to the lack of consideration of the disease’s heterogeneity, but according to recent data, most studies do not find prominent evidence of olfactory loss in ET. CONCLUSION: Although there is increasing interest in studies on non-motor symptoms in ET, there are few studies on sensory deficits, which are of particularly high prevalence. More studies are needed on to investigate the basis of non-motor symptoms, including sensory deficits.