Objective: This study was designed to explore changes in cortical thickness in patients with early Parkinson’s disease (PD) at different Hoehn and Yahr (H-Y) stages and to demonstrate the association of abnormally altered brain regions using part III of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-III).

Background: Objective diagnostic biomarkers for early stage PD are still lacking, but patients gradually present clinical symptoms and signs with increasing H-Y stages and exhibit the typical symptoms at middle and late stages, which are not difficult to diagnose. Therefore, the identification of early PD imaging signs is of great importance for early diagnosis of PD.

Methods: Sixty early PD patients and 29 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) were enrolled in this study. All PD patients underwent comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological evaluations and 3.0T magnetic resonance scanning. Among them, those with H-Y stage ≤ 1.5 were included in the mild group, and others patients were included in the moderate group. FreeSurfer software was used to calculate the surface morphological index-cortical thickness.

Results: The mean cortical thickness of the temporal pole gyrus, fusiform gyrus, insula of the left hemisphere and the fusiform gyrus, isthmus cingulate cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, middle temporal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex of the right hemisphere exhibited significant decreasing trends when comparing the three groups (Figure 1, 2 and 3). After controlling for the effects of age, gender, and duration, the UPDRS-III scores in patients with early PD were correlated with the cortical thickness of the left and right fusiform gyrus and left temporal pole gyrus (p < 0.05)(Table 1).

Conclusions: The average cortical thickness of specific brain regions was reduced with increased severity of the disease in early PD patients at different H-Y stages, and UPDRS-III score for those patients was correlated with the cortical thickness of the left and right fusiform gyrus and the left temporal pole gyrus.

« Back to 2018 International Congress

MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/changes-in-cortical-thickness-in-patients-with-early-parkinsons-disease-at-different-hoehn-and-yahr-stages/