Photo Credit: Kateryna Kon

The following is a summary of “Sex-specific brain morphological and network differences in patients showing Parkinson’s disease with and without possible rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder,” published in the April 2025 issue of Frontiers in Neurology by Liu et al. 

Sex influences disease manifestations, yet its impact on brain morphology in Parkinson’s disease with or without eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) remains unclear. This study investigates sex-specific brain changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) subgroups. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine sex-specific differences in brain morphology among Parkinson’s disease subgroups. 

They collected high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and clinical scale data from 278 participants in Parkinson’s Disease Progression Marker Initiative database: 93 patients with PD-pRBD (60 males, 33 females), 114 patients with PDnon-pRBD (68 males, 46 females), and 71 healthy controls (44 males, 17 females). Computational anatomy toolbox (CAT) 12 was used to gather data on gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical morphological metrics, followed by construction of individual-level morphological similarity networks. Topological properties of the network were then analyzed using graph theoretical methods. 

The results showed that in the PD-pRBD group, GMV in the frontal and temporal lobes was lower in males than females. In contrast, the gyrification index (GI) of the frontal lobe was lower in males than females in the PDnon-pRBD group. Network analyses revealed that male patients with PD-pRBD had lower network information integration, particularly in global fractal dimension (FD) networks. Additionally, in the PD-pRBD group, male patients showed a strong correlation between morphological network metrics and cognitive performance, as measured by Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) memory scores. 

Investigators found more significant sex-related differences in brain morphological changes in the PD-pRBD group compared to the PDnon-pRBD group.

Source: frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2025.1561555/full