Cerebral topography of vesicular cholinergic transporter changes in neurologically intact adults: A [18F]FEOBV PET study
Prabesh Kanel,
Sygrid van der Zee,
Carlos A. Sanchez-Catasus,
Robert A. Koeppe,
Peter J.H. Scott,
Teus van Laar,
Roger L. Albin,
Nicolaas I. Bohnen
Affiliations
Prabesh Kanel
Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; University of Michigan Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease Research, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Corresponding author at: Functional Neuroimaging, Cognitive and Mobility Laboratory, Departments of Radiology and Neurology, University of Michigan, 24 Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, Box 362, Ann Arbor, MI 48105-9755, USA.
Sygrid van der Zee
Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands
Carlos A. Sanchez-Catasus
Department of Neurology, Clinica Universidad de Navarra, 31008 Pamplona, Spain; Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands
Robert A. Koeppe
Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Peter J.H. Scott
Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Teus van Laar
Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands
Roger L. Albin
University of Michigan Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease Research, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Neurology Service and GRECC, VAAAHS, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Nicolaas I. Bohnen
Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; University of Michigan Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease Research, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Neurology Service and GRECC, VAAAHS, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Acetylcholine plays a major role in brain cognitive and motor functions with regional cholinergic terminal loss common in several neurodegenerative disorders. We describe age-related declines of regional cholinergic neuron terminal density in vivo using the positron emission tomography (PET) ligand [18F](–)5-Fluoroethoxybenzovesamicol ([18F]FEOBV), a vesamicol analogue selectively binding to the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT). A total of 42 subjects without clinical evidence of neurologic disease (mean 50.55 [range 20–80] years, 24 Male/18 Female) underwent [18F]FEOBV brain PET imaging. We used SPM based voxel-wise statistical analysis to perform whole brain voxel-based parametric analysis (family-wise error corrected, FWE) and to also extract the most significant clusters of regions correlating with aging with gender as nuisance variable. Age-related VAChT binding reductions were found in primary sensorimotor cortex, visual cortex, caudate nucleus, anterior to mid-cingulum, bilateral insula, para-hippocampus, hippocampus, anterior temporal lobes/amygdala, dorsomedial thalamus, metathalamus, and cerebellum (gender and FWE-corrected, P < 0.05). These findings show a specific topographic pattern of regional vulnerability of cholinergic nerve terminals across multiple cholinergic systems accompanying aging.
