Screening hypersexuality in Parkinson's disease in everyday practice

Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a short and reliable measure of hypersexuality that could be used in everyday practice in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Design: The original questionnaire containing twenty-five-items, the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST), was shortened and tested in a PD population. Methods: Successive reductions were performed until a final set of items satisfied the model fit requirements. The testing phase consisted of administering the SAST questionnaire to 159 PD patients. It included i) acceptability, ii) dimensionality construct validity, and iii) a complete general correlation structure of data. Finally, criterion validity of the final version of the instrument was assessed. Results: The initial questionnaire was reduced to five items (PD-SAST) with a cut-off score of 2. Psychometric analysis revealed three factors corresponding to "Preoccupation", "Cannot stop" and "Relationship disturbance". The discriminant validity of the PD-SAST was high (ROC area under the curve: 0.96). Conclusions: The PD-SAST performs well as a screening instrument. It has been found to be acceptable to patients and is ready for use. Moreover, it tests multidimensional aspects of hypersexuality. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.