Acoustic markers of speech timing and articulatory precision correlate moderately with physical disability, whereas aerodynamic capacity and voice quality appear relatively preserved. Consequently, clinical protocols for MS should prioritize a multimodal approach combining reading tasks (to capture prosodic and articulatory deficits) and sustained vowels (to monitor phonatory instability), while aerodynamic measures such as MPT appear to have limited utility for tracking disease progression.
Hernández et al. (Sun,) studied this question.