Rajagopalan Venkateswaran, Pioro Erik P
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, India.
Department of Neurology, Neuromuscular Center, Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Amyotroph Lateral Scler Frontotemporal Degener. 2025 Feb;26(1-2):85-92. doi: 10.1080/21678421.2024.2410281. Epub 2024 Oct 7.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) exhibits several different presentations and clinical phenotypes. Of these, classic ALS (ALS-Cl), which is the most common phenotype, presents with relatively equal amounts of upper motor neuron and lower motor neuron signs. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a noninvasive way to assess central nervous system damage in these patients. To our knowledge no study is available where exploratory whole brain grey matter (GM) and white matter (WM) network analysis is performed considering only the ALS-Cl subgroup of ALS patients.
GM voxel-based morphometry analysis and WM network analysis using graph theory was performed in the MRI dataset of 14 neurologic controls and 25 ALS-Cl patients.
No significant GM differences were observed between ALS-Cl and neurologic controls. WM network revealed significant ( < 0.05) reduction and increase in degree measure in several extramotor brain regions of ALS-Cl patients. Both global and local graph metrics revealed significant abnormal values in ALS-Cl patients when compared to neurologic controls. Significant WM changes in ALS-Cl patients with no significant GM changes suggest that neurodegeneration may onset as an "axonopathy" in this ALS subtype.
肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）有几种不同的表现形式和临床表型。其中，经典型ALS（ALS-Cl）是最常见的表型，其上下运动神经元体征的出现比例相对均衡。磁共振成像（MRI）为评估这些患者的中枢神经系统损伤提供了一种非侵入性方法。据我们所知，尚无研究仅针对ALS患者的ALS-Cl亚组进行全脑灰质（GM）和白质（WM）网络的探索性分析。
在14名神经对照组和25名ALS-Cl患者的MRI数据集中进行了基于体素的GM形态学分析和使用图论的WM网络分析。
在ALS-Cl患者和神经对照组之间未观察到显著的GM差异。WM网络显示，ALS-Cl患者的几个运动外脑区的度测量值有显著降低和增加（<0.05）。与神经对照组相比，全局和局部图指标在ALS-Cl患者中均显示出显著异常值。ALS-Cl患者中WM有显著变化而GM无显著变化，这表明在这种ALS亚型中，神经退行性变可能以“轴索性病变”开始。
