摘要The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical heterogeneity of Parkinson's disease (PD) among a cohort of Chinese patients in early stages.Clinical data on demographics,motor variables,motor phenotypes,disease progression,global cognitive function,depression,apathy,sleep quality,constipation,fatigue,and L-dopa complications were collected from 138 Chinese PD subjects in early stages (Hoehn and Yahr stages 1-3).The PD subject subtypes were classified using k-means cluster analysis according to the clinical data from five- to three-cluster consecutively.Kappa statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the consistency among different subtype solutions.The cluster analysis indicated four main subtypes:the non-tremor dominant subtype (NTD,n=28,20.3％),rapid disease progression subtype (RDP,n=7,5.1％),young-onset subtype (YO,n=50,36.2％),and tremor dominant subtype (TD,n=53,38.4％).Overall,78.3％ (108/138) of subjects were always classified between the same three groups (52 always in TD,7 in RDP,and 49 in NTD),and 98.6％ (136/138) between five- and four-cluster solutions.However,subjects classified as NTD in the four-cluster analysis were dispersed into different subtypes in the three-cluster analysis,with low concordance between four- and three-cluster solutions (kappa value=-0.139,P=0.001 ).This study defines clinical heterogeneity of PD patients in early stages using a data-driven approach.The subtypes generated by the four-cluster solution appear to exhibit ideal internal cohesion and external isolation.