Objective: This study is to clarify the differences of thinning in cerebral cortical areas in PD patients by age of onset.

Background: It is well known that Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with an older age at onset have rapid disease progression than those with a younger age at onset. However, age-related pathological changes have not been scarcely clarified in patients with PD.

Method: A total of 76 PD patients who met the criteria for clinical diagnosis of PD by the Movement Disorder Society were enrolled in this study. Mean age of participants was 69.9±7.6 years old (mean ± SD; range, 46～87 years), mean duration was 7.0 ±4.3 years (mean ± SD ; range, 0.1～19.3 years). We demonstrated thinning of the cerebral cortex using head MRI data of the same imaging conditions performed on the PD patients. FreeSurfer (Ver 6.0) were used to evaluate thinning of the cerebral cortex. The patients with PD was divided into two groups based on age at onset: the older onset group was greater than or equal to 63 years old and the younger onset group was less than 63 years old. The correlation between disease duration and thinning of the cerebral cortex was analyzed between two groups.

Results: In the older onset group, the lower parietal lobule, upper parietal lobule, lateral occipital gyrus, and anterior wedge thinned significantly (all P <0.01) compared to those in the younger onset group.

Conclusion: The data provide new insight into the age-related pathological changes in PD patients, revealing that age of onset may cause strong thinning of several parts of cerebral cortex with disease progression.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-association-between-thinning-of-cerebral-cortex-and-age-of-onset-in-parkinsons-disease/