COVID-19 and Speech-Language Pathology Clinical Practice of Voice and Upper Airway Disorders.

Purpose Evaluation and management of voice and upper airway disorders in adults and children, by speech-language pathologists worldwide, have been significantly altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondary to the pathogenic nature of the virus in the respiratory tract and upper airway, it is essential that speech-language pathologists who specialize in these disorders are knowledgeable of current practices to provide evidence-based care while minimizing viral transmission. Understanding how and when SARS-CoV-2 spreads is critical to the development of effective infection prevention within clinical practices.

Relationships among rat ultrasonic vocalizations, behavioral measures of striatal dopamine loss, and striatal tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity at acute and chronic time points following unilateral 6-hydroxydopamine-induced dopamine depletion.

Voice deficits in Parkinson disease (PD) emerge early in the disease process, but do not improve with standard treatments targeting dopamine. Experimental work in the rat shows that severe and chronic unilateral nigrostriatal dopamine depletion with 6-OHDA results in decreased intensity, bandwidth, and complexity of ultrasonic vocalizations. However, it is unclear if mild/acute dopamine depletion, paralleling earlier stages of PD, results in vocalization deficits, or to what degree vocalization parameters are correlated with other dopamine-dependent indicators of lesion severity or percent of tyrosine hydroxylase (%TH) loss.

Targeted training of ultrasonic vocalizations in aged and Parkinsonian rats.

Voice deficits are a common complication of both Parkinson disease (PD) and aging; they can significantly diminish quality of life by impacting communication abilities. (1, 2) Targeted training (speech/voice therapy) can improve specific voice deficits,(3, 4) although the underlying mechanisms of behavioral interventions are not well understood. Systematic investigation of voice deficits and therapy should consider many factors that are difficult to control in humans, such as age, home environment, age post-onset of disease, severity of disease, and medications.

Tongue force and timing deficits in a rat model of Parkinson disease.

Deficits in tongue function in conjunction with airway compromise can contribute to dysphagia associated with Parkinson disease (PD). However, it is unknown if these deficits are related to the primary disease pathology in PD, nigrostriatal dopamine depletion. To directly study the impact of striatal dopamine depletion on tongue function, we used unilateral infusion of the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) into the medial forebrain bundle and measured tongue force and timing parameters during a complex tongue protrusion task for a water reward.