Journal
NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL
Volume 32, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102807
Keywords
Dopamine transporter; SPECT; Controls; Healthy controls
Categories
Funding
- Turku University Hospital (VTR-funds)
- Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study evaluated differences in brain dopamine transporter (DAT) binding between symptomatic parkinsonism patients and healthy individuals, finding higher DAT binding in the posterior putamen of symptomatic patients compared to controls. DAT binding correlated negatively with age in both groups, but not with motor symptom severity, cognitive function, or depression ratings.
Objective: To evaluate possible differences between brain dopamine transporter (DAT) binding in a group of symptomatic parkinsonism patients without dopaminergic degeneration and healthy individuals. Background: Dopaminergic neuroimaging studies of Parkinson's disease (PD) have often used control groups formed from symptomatic patients with apparently normal striatal dopamine function. We sought to investigate whether symptomatic patients can be used to represent dopaminergically normal healthy controls. Methods: Forty healthy elderly individuals were scanned with DAT [123I]FP-CIT SPECT and compared to 69 ageand sex-matched symptomatic patients with nondegenerative conditions (including essential tremor, druginduced parkinsonism and vascular parkinsonism). An automated region-of-interest based analysis of the caudate nucleus and the anterior/posterior putamen was performed. Specific binding ratios (SBR = [ROI-occ]/ occ) were compared between the groups. Results: DAT binding in symptomatic patients was 8.6% higher in the posterior putamen than in healthy controls (p = 0.03). Binding correlated negatively with age in both groups but not with motor symptom severity, cognitive function or depression ratings. Conclusions: Putaminal DAT binding, as measured with [123I]FP-CIT SPECT, was higher in symptomatic controls than in healthy individuals. The reason for the difference is unclear but can include selection bias when DAT binding is used to aid clinical diagnosis and possible self-selection bias in healthy volunteerism. This effect should be taken into consideration when designing and interpreting neuroimaging trials investigating the dopamine system with [123I]FP-CIT SPECT.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available