Association of Cortical and Subcortical Microstructure With Clinical Progression and Fluid Biomarkers in Patients With Parkinson Disease
Linbo Wang, Cheng Zhou, Wei Zhang, Minming Zhang, Wei Cheng, Jianfeng Feng
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Mean diffusivity (MD) of diffusion MRI (dMRI) has been used to measure cortical and subcortical microstructural properties. This study investigated relationships of cortical and subcortical MD, clinical progression, and fluid biomarkers in Parkinson disease (PD). METHODS: This longitudinal study using data from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative was collected from April 2011 to July 2022. Clinical symptoms were assessed with Movement Disorder Society-sponsored revision of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores. Clinical assessments were followed up to 5 years. Linear mixed-effects (LME) models were performed to examine associations of MD and the annual rate of changes in clinical scores. Partial correlation analysis was conducted to examine the associations of MD and fluid biomarker levels. RESULTS: < 0.05, FDR corrected) derived from PET scans in the brain of healthy volunteers. DISCUSSION: In this cohort study, cortical and subcortical MD values at baseline were associated with clinical progression and baseline fluid biomarkers, suggesting that microstructural properties could be useful for stratification of patients with fast clinical progression.