The following is a summary of “Volumetric changes and clinical trajectories in Parkinson’s disease: a prospective multicentric study,” published in the August 2023 issue of Neurology by Marques et al.

Previous studies on brain changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) used MRI, but few were done in large cohorts with comprehensive assessments of motor and non-motor symptoms. Researchers performed a retrospective study to identify brain volumetric changes in PD patients and predict motor, psycho-behavioral, and cognitive evolution at one year.

They conducted a one-year longitudinal study assessing demographical, clinical, and brain volumetric characteristics in PD patients and healthy controls from the MPI-R2* cohort. The survey identified distinct subgroups of PD patients based on motor, cognitive, and psycho-behavioral progressions.

The results showed 150 PD patients and 73 control subjects. Over a year, volume variations between PD and control subjects in different brain regions were not significantly different. However, we found that PD patients with motor deterioration at one year had a reduced posterior cingulate cortex volume at baseline (P=0.017). Patients with psycho-behavioral relapse exhibited bilateral reductions in amygdala volume (P=0.015 and P=0.041) and hippocampus volume (P=0.015 and P=0.053) at baseline, regardless of age, dopaminergic treatment, and center.

They concluded brain volumetric characteristics at baseline predict clinical trajectories at 1 year in PD.

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-023-11947-0