Unrath Alexander, Juengling Freimut D, Schork Marion, Kassubek Jan
Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Germany.
Mov Disord. 2007 Sep 15;22(12):1751-6. doi: 10.1002/mds.21608.
An impairment of central somatosensory processing is assumed in restless legs syndrome (RLS). Although functional neuroimaging in RLS gave evidence to the presence of widespread functional changes in various brain areas, structural changes at the cortical level were not reported to be RLS-associated to date. Here, an analysis of high-resolution three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed in 63 patients with idiopathic RLS by use of optimized voxel-based morphometry, in order to investigate if cortical areas might be altered in volume at group level according to the phenomenology of RLS. The comparison of the RLS patients versus controls yielded significant regional decreases of gray matter volume at corrected P < 0.05 in the bihemispheric primary somatosensory cortex, which additionally extended into left-sided primary motor areas. All clusters correlated both with the severity of RLS symptoms and with disease duration. These results, for the first time, give in vivo evidence to structural neocortical gray matter alterations in RLS patients. The alterations in the sensorimotor cortices might add to the pathophysiological concepts of idiopathic RLS.
不宁腿综合征（RLS）被认为存在中枢体感处理功能障碍。尽管RLS的功能神经影像学研究证明了不同脑区存在广泛的功能变化，但迄今为止，尚未有报道称皮质水平的结构变化与RLS相关。在此，通过使用优化的基于体素的形态测量法，对63例特发性RLS患者进行了高分辨率三维磁共振成像（MRI）分析，以研究根据RLS的现象学，在组水平上皮质区域的体积是否可能发生改变。将RLS患者与对照组进行比较，结果显示在经校正的P<0.05时，双侧初级体感皮层的灰质体积显著减少，且这种减少还延伸至左侧初级运动区。所有聚类均与RLS症状的严重程度和病程相关。这些结果首次在体内证明了RLS患者新皮质灰质结构的改变。感觉运动皮层的改变可能会补充特发性RLS的病理生理概念。
