Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the alterations of five major resting state networks (RSNs) and striatum-related functional connectivity (FC) in early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with and without type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

Background: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) increased the risk of PD and aggravated motor and non-motor dysfunctions in patients with PD. Patients with T2DM were prone to develop cognitive impairment and gait problems compared with healthy controls, which was associated with disrupted cortico-thalamic circuits and cerebro-cerebellar network. Hence, it was worthwhile to investigate the potential role of DM in PD by using resting state functional MRI (fMRI). We hypothesized that DM induced more severe deficits in motor-related network and default mode network (DMN) in early-stage patients with PD, which respectively contributed to their clinical features in motor and cognitive function.

Methods: Twenty PD patients with preceding T2DM (PD-DM) were recruited in our study, as well as twenty PD patients without T2DM (PD-nonDM) and twenty healthy controls. All participants without dementia underwent overall clinical assessments and resting state fMRI scans. Imaging analyses of the brain network were evaluated by seed-based correlation approach and focused on five major RSNs and the striatum.

Results: Patients with PD-DM compared to patients with PD-nonDM and healthy controls had significant reduced DMN connectivity (p < 0.05, corrected by FWE), which correlated with their MoCA scores. Reduced FC of putamen and impaired sensorimotor network (SMN) were revealed in patients with PD subgroup (p < 0.05, corrected by FWE), while patients with PD-DM did not show significant difference of striatum-related FC and SMN connectivity compared to patients with PD-nonDM. No difference was found among groups in intra-network FC of the dorsal attention, control, and salience networks. The analysis of regional volume did not show grey matter difference among groups.

Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that DM aggravates DMN network, but not motor-related network, in patients with PD. These results may be helpful for facilitating further understanding of the impact of DM on the pathophysiological mechanism of PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/diabetes-mellitus-alters-resting-state-functional-networks-in-early-stage-parkinsons-disease-without-dementia/