Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Neurobiol Dis. 2021 Jan;148:105223. doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2020.105223. Epub 2020 Dec 11.
Focal dystonias are the most common forms of isolated dystonia; however, the etiopathophysiological signatures of disorder penetrance and clinical manifestation remain unclear. Using an imaging genetics approach, we investigated functional and structural representations of neural endophenotypes underlying the penetrance and manifestation of laryngeal dystonia in families, including 21 probands and 21 unaffected relatives, compared to 32 unrelated healthy controls. We further used a supervised machine-learning algorithm to predict the risk for dystonia development in susceptible individuals based on neural features of identified endophenotypes. We found that abnormalities in prefrontal-parietal cortex, thalamus, and caudate nucleus were commonly shared between patients and their unaffected relatives, representing an intermediate endophenotype of laryngeal dystonia. Machine learning classified 95.2% of unaffected relatives as patients rather than healthy controls, substantiating that these neural alterations represent the endophenotypic marker of dystonia penetrance, independent of its symptomatology. Additional abnormalities in premotor-parietal-temporal cortical regions, caudate nucleus, and cerebellum were present only in patients but not their unaffected relatives, likely representing a secondary endophenotype of dystonia manifestation. Based on alterations in the parietal cortex and caudate nucleus, the machine learning categorized 28.6% of unaffected relative as patients, indicating their increased lifetime risk for developing clinical manifestation of dystonia. The identified endophenotypic neural markers may be implemented for screening of at-risk individuals for dystonia development, selection of families for genetic studies of novel variants based on their risk for disease penetrance, or stratification of patients who would respond differently to a particular treatment in clinical trials.
局限性肌张力障碍是最常见的孤立性肌张力障碍形式;然而,障碍外显率和临床表现的病因病理生理特征仍不清楚。我们采用影像遗传学方法,研究了神经内表型在家族性喉痉挛外显率和表现中的功能和结构表现,包括 21 名先证者和 21 名无病亲属,以及 32 名无关健康对照者。我们进一步使用监督机器学习算法,根据鉴定的内表型的神经特征,预测易感个体发生肌张力障碍的风险。我们发现,前额叶-顶叶皮层、丘脑和尾状核的异常在患者及其无病亲属之间普遍存在,代表喉痉挛的中间内表型。机器学习将 95.2%的无病亲属分类为患者而非健康对照者,这证实了这些神经改变代表了肌张力障碍外显率的内表型标志物,与症状无关。在运动前-顶叶-颞叶皮质区域、尾状核和小脑中还存在仅在患者中而不在其无病亲属中存在的额外异常,可能代表肌张力障碍表现的二级内表型。基于顶叶皮层和尾状核的改变,机器学习将 28.6%的无病亲属分类为患者,表明他们发展为肌张力障碍临床症状的终生风险增加。所鉴定的内表型神经标志物可用于筛查肌张力障碍发展的高危个体,根据疾病外显率为新型变体的遗传研究选择家族,或分层对特定治疗有不同反应的患者临床试验。