Patient-Reported Outcome Measure of Ataxia Correlates with Canonical Clinical Assessments in Chinese Spinocerebellar Ataxias

Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) patients’ reports of their own experiences are essential to the outcome evaluation in clinical trials. To better understand the health condition and well-being of ataxia population, Patient-Reported Outcome Measure of Ataxia (PROM-Ataxia) was developed. The aim of our study was to culturally adapt the PROM-Ataxia into Chinese version and assess its correlation with canonical clinical assessments. We translated the PROM-Ataxia into Chinese following the ISPOR TCA Task Force guidelines and evaluated its correlation with measures of motor ataxia, non-ataxia signs, quality of life, and mental health in 92 Chinese SCA participants. Nearly all the participants found this questionnaire complete and intelligible but some items were found repetitive or ambiguous. The total score of PROM-Ataxia from stage 0 to stage 3 was 23.24 ± 18.53, 79.11 ± 40.45, 144.30 ± 41.30, and 176.20 ± 31.74, respectively (p < 0.0001). It was strongly correlated with the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) (r = 0.832, p < 0.0001). Physical and activities domain of PROM-Ataxia were correlated with measures of motor ataxia, quality of life, and psychological health while mental health domain was correlated with all the clinical assessments including inventory of non-ataxia signs and cognitive assessment. We translated the PROM-Ataxia into Chinese for the first time, which allows transnational comparability in future studies. Our study validated the responsiveness of PROM-Ataxia to established clinical measures in Chinese SCA patients and implied its potential to evaluate the therapeutic effect and optimize the sensitivity of changes in clinical outcome assessments.