Teaching videotapes, developed to aid in the evaluation of several movement disorders, have not been used in essential tremor research. As part of the Washington Heights‐Inwood Genetic Study of Essential Tremor (WHIGET), we developed a reliable and valid tremor rating scale. Because this rating scale is currently being used by investigators at other centers, we developed a teaching videotape to aid in the consistent application of this scale. OBJECTIVE To develop a teaching videotape for a revised version of the WHIGET Tremor Rating Scale and to assess the interrater agreement among raters who used this videotape to rate tremor. METHODS The revised WHIGET Tremor Rating Scale was used to rate action tremor from 0 to 4 during six tests: arm extension, pouring, drinking, using a spoon, finger‐to‐nose, and drawing spirals. A 22‐minute teaching videotape was developed that includes a 29‐item educational section and a self‐assessment section consisting of 20 examples of tremor ratings chosen by the two WHIGET study neurologists. Eight raters, including senior movement disorder specialists, movement disorder fellows, general neurologists, and a movement disorder nurse practitioner, independently viewed the videotape and rated tremor during the self‐assessment section. Interobserver reliability was assessed with weighted kappa statistics (κw). RESULTS Eight raters each rated 20 items (160 ratings total). Total κw was 0.97 (nearly perfect agreement). Interrater reliability was as follows: κw = 0.99 (movement disorder specialists), κw = 0.98 (movement disorder fellows), and κw = 0.97 (general neurologists); all κw were nearly perfect. CONCLUSIONS This teaching videotape may be used to improve the uniform application of the revised WHIGET Tremor Rating Scale by raters with various levels of experience in movement disorders. Mov. Disord. 16:89–93, 2001. © 2001 Movement Disorder Society.

The cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) contains an antibody that immunocytochemically reacts with dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). This antibody was found in 78% of the CSF samples taken from patients with clinical PD. In contrast, only 3% of the CSF samples taken from control patients or patients with neurologic symptoms other than PD possessed this antibody. The production of this antibody might contribute to disease progression but does not appear to be the etiologic factor responsible for PD. In other experiments, concentrates of the CSF of patients with PD enhanced growth of mesencephalic cultures relative to control CSF. Both the antibody and the growth-promoting activity found in CSF are associated with degeneration of the SN and might therefore be useful as potential diagnostic markers for PD.

The role of a broad range of life events, especially those viewed as stressful, in the genesis of somatic illnesses or psychiatric disturbances is a subject of considerable interest. Recently attempts have been made to develop quantitative measures of life events and to explore the relationship between the ‘amount’ of life events and/or stress and illness in a general population (Rahe et al., 1968; Rahe et al., 1970): for example, The Social Readjustment Rating Questionnaire (SRRQ) (Holmes and Rahe, 1967). In the development of this scale a list of 43 life events was presented to a sample of 394 subjects. Marriage was arbitrarily assigned a value of 500, and the subjects were asked to compare the amount of relative readjustment they would anticipate from the other events. Means and item rankings (Masuda and Holmes, 1967) have been reported to be relatively consistent in groups of different age, sex, marital status, education, social class, generation American, religion, race and cultural background (Holmes and Rahe, 1967). These findings have been found reliable with patients on our unit and in a group of medical students (Mendels and Weinstein, 1972). Paykel et al. (1971) performed a study of weightings of a list of life events and obtained weights which were highly significantly correlated for the 14 items that were identical to those found on the SRRQ. They tested a mixed group of psychiatric patients and found that in general those events defined as ‘exits’ were scaled high, whereas events defined as ‘entrances’ had lower values.

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