Department of Neurology, Saitama Medical University, Saitama, Japan.
Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine, Saitama Medical University, Saitama, Japan.
PLoS One. 2023 Feb 21;18(2):e0281987. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281987. eCollection 2023.
Patients with older-onset Parkinson's disease (PD) have more severe motor symptoms, faster progression, and a worse prognosis. The thinning of the cerebral cortex is one of the causes of these issues. Patients with older-onset PD manifest more extended neurodegeneration associated with α-synuclein deposition in the cerebral cortex; however, the cortical regions that undergo thinning are unclear. We aimed to identify cortical regions with different thinning depending on the age of onset in patients with PD. Sixty-two patients with PD were included in this study. Patients with PD onset at <63 years old were included in the early or middle-onset PD group, and those with PD onset at >63 years old were included in the late-onset PD (LOPD) group. Brain magnetic resonance imaging data of these patients were processed using FreeSurfer to measure their cortical thickness. The LOPD group displayed less cortical thickness in the superior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, temporal pole, paracentral lobule, superior parietal lobule, precuneus, and occipital lobe than the early or middle-onset PD group. Compared with patients with early and middle-onset PD, elderly patients displayed extended cortical thinning with disease progression. Differences in the clinical manifestations of PD according to the age of onset were partly due to variations in the morphological changes in the brain.
老年发病的帕金森病（PD）患者具有更严重的运动症状、更快的进展速度和更差的预后。大脑皮层变薄是导致这些问题的原因之一。老年发病 PD 患者表现出与大脑皮层α-突触核蛋白沉积相关的更广泛的神经退行性变；然而，皮层变薄的区域尚不清楚。我们旨在确定与 PD 患者发病年龄相关的不同皮层变薄区域。本研究纳入了 62 名 PD 患者。PD 发病年龄<63 岁的患者被纳入早/中年发病 PD 组，PD 发病年龄>63 岁的患者被纳入晚发病 PD（LOPD）组。使用 FreeSurfer 处理这些患者的脑磁共振成像数据，以测量其皮质厚度。与早/中年发病 PD 组相比，LOPD 组患者的额上回、额中回、中央前回、中央后回、颞上回、颞极、旁中央小叶、顶叶上回、楔前叶和枕叶的皮质厚度更小。与早、中年发病 PD 患者相比，老年患者的大脑皮层随着疾病的进展而出现广泛的皮层变薄。发病年龄不同导致的 PD 临床表现的差异部分归因于大脑形态变化的差异。
