Faculty of Frontier Engineering, Institute of Science & Engineering, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan.
Laboratory of Neuromuscular Biomechanics, School of Health and Sport Sciences, Chukyo University, Toyota 470-0393, Japan.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Oct 4;21(19):6615. doi: 10.3390/s21196615.
The relationship between motor unit (MU) firing behavior and the severity of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease (PD) is not clear. This study aimed to elucidate the association between degeneration with dopaminergic pathways and MU firing behavior in people with PD. Fourteen females with PD (age, 72.6 ± 7.2 years, disease duration, 3.5 ± 2.1 years) were enrolled in this study. All participants performed a submaximal, isometric knee extension ramp-up contraction from 0% to 80% of their maximal voluntary contraction strength. We used high-density surface electromyography with 64 electrodes to record the muscle activity of the vastus lateralis muscle and decomposed the signals with the convolution kernel compensation technique to extract the signals of individual MUs. We calculated the degree of degeneration of the central lesion-specific binding ratio by dopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography. The primary, novel results were as follows: (1) moderate-to-strong correlations were observed between the degree of degeneration of the central lesion and MU firing behavior; (2) a moderate correlation was observed between clinical measures of disease severity and MU firing behavior; and (3) the methods of predicting central nervous system degeneration from MU firing behavior abnormalities had a high detection accuracy with an area under the curve >0.83. These findings suggest that abnormalities in MU activity can be used to predict central nervous system degeneration following PD.
运动单位（MU）放电行为与帕金森病（PD）神经退行性变的严重程度之间的关系尚不清楚。本研究旨在阐明 PD 患者中与多巴胺能通路退变和 MU 放电行为之间的关联。本研究纳入了 14 名女性 PD 患者（年龄 72.6±7.2 岁，病程 3.5±2.1 年）。所有参与者均进行了最大自主收缩强度的 0%至 80%的亚最大等长膝伸 Ramp-up 收缩。我们使用 64 个电极的高密度表面肌电图记录股外侧肌的肌肉活动，并使用卷积核补偿技术对信号进行分解，以提取单个 MU 的信号。我们通过多巴胺转运体单光子发射计算机断层扫描计算中央病变特异性结合比的退变程度。主要的新颖结果如下：（1）中央病变的退变程度与 MU 放电行为之间存在中度至强相关性；（2）MU 放电行为与疾病严重程度的临床测量之间存在中度相关性；（3）从 MU 放电行为异常预测中枢神经系统退变的方法具有较高的检测准确性，曲线下面积>0.83。这些发现表明，MU 活动的异常可用于预测 PD 后的中枢神经系统退变。
