npj Parkinson's Disease (Jun 2021)

Fiber-specific white matter alterations in early-stage tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease

  • Christina Andica,
  • Koji Kamagata,
  • Yuya Saito,
  • Wataru Uchida,
  • Shohei Fujita,
  • Akifumi Hagiwara,
  • Toshiaki Akashi,
  • Akihiko Wada,
  • Takashi Ogawa,
  • Taku Hatano,
  • Nobutaka Hattori,
  • Shigeki Aoki

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-021-00197-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Abstract Using a fixel-based analysis (FBA), we assessed the fiber-specific white matter (WM) alterations in nonmedicated patients with early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD) with tremor-dominant (TD; n = 53; mean age, 61.7 ± 8.7 years) and postural instability and gait disorder (PIGD; n = 27; mean age, 57.8 ± 8.1 years) motor subtypes and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC; n = 43; mean age, 61.6 ± 9.2 years) from Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative dataset. FBA revealed significantly increased macrostructural fiber cross section and a combination of fiber density and cross section metrics within the corticospinal tract in patients with TD-PD compared with HC. Nonetheless, no significant changes in FBA-derived metrics were found in patients with PIGD-PD compared with HC or patients with TD-PD. Our results may provide evidence of WM neural compensation mechanisms in patients with TD-PD marked by increases in fiber bundle size and the ability to relay information between brain regions.