Zhang Siyan, Tao Kai, Wang Jia, Duan Yunyou, Wang Bao, Liu Xi
Department of Ultrasound, Second Affiliated Hospital of Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China.
Department of Neurosurgery, Second Affiliated Hospital of Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China.
Front Cell Neurosci. 2020 Aug 4;14:216. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2020.00216. eCollection 2020.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, and there is still no effective way to stop its progress. Therefore, early detection is crucial for the prevention and the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The current diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, however, mainly depends on the symptoms, so it is necessary to establish a reliable imaging modality for PD diagnosis and its progression monitoring. Other studies and our previous ones demonstrated that substantia nigra hyperechogenicity (SNH) was detected by transcranial sonography (TCS) in the ventral midbrain of PD patients, and SNH is regarded as a characteristic marker of PD. The present study aimed to explore whether SNH could serve as a reliable imaging modality to monitor the progression of dopaminergic neurodegeneration of PD. The results revealed that the size of SNH was positively related with the degree of dopaminergic neuron death in PD animal models. Furthermore, we revealed that microglia activation contributed to the SNH formation in substantia nigra (SN) in PD models. Taken together, this study suggests that SNH through TCS is a promising imaging modality to monitor the progression of dopaminergic neurodegeneration of PD.
帕金森病（PD）是第二常见的神经退行性疾病，目前仍没有有效的方法来阻止其进展。因此，早期检测对于帕金森病的预防和治疗至关重要。然而，目前帕金森病的诊断主要依赖于症状，所以有必要建立一种可靠的成像方式用于帕金森病的诊断及其病情进展监测。其他研究以及我们之前的研究表明，经颅超声检查（TCS）在帕金森病患者的腹侧中脑检测到黑质高回声（SNH），并且SNH被视为帕金森病的一个特征性标志物。本研究旨在探讨SNH是否可作为一种可靠的成像方式来监测帕金森病多巴胺能神经变性的进展。结果显示，在帕金森病动物模型中，SNH的大小与多巴胺能神经元死亡程度呈正相关。此外，我们发现小胶质细胞活化促成了帕金森病模型中黑质（SN）的SNH形成。综上所述，本研究表明经TCS检测的SNH是一种有前景的成像方式，可用于监测帕金森病多巴胺能神经变性的进展。
