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Lookup NU author(s): Professor David BrooksORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The tau tangle ligand F-18-AV-1451 (F-18-T807) binds to neuromelanin in the midbrain, and may therefore be a measure of the pigmented dopaminergic neuronal count in the substantia nigra. Parkinson's disease is characterized by progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons. Extrapolation of post-mortem data predicts that a similar to 30% decline of nigral dopamine neurons is necessary to cause motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease. Putamen dopamine terminal loss at disease onset most likely exceeds that of the nigral cell bodies and has been estimated to be of the order of 50-70%. We investigated the utility of F-18-AV-1451 positron emission tomography to visualize the concentration of nigral neuromelanin in Parkinson's disease and correlated the findings to dopamine transporter density, measured by I-123-FP-CIT single photon emission computed tomography. A total of 17 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and 16 age- and sex-matched control subjects had F-18-AV-1451 positron emission tomography using a Siemens high-resolution research tomograph. Twelve patients with Parkinson's disease also received a standardized I-123-FP-CIT single photon emission computed tomography scan at our imaging facility. Many of the patients with Parkinson's disease displayed visually apparent decreased F-18-AV-1451 signal in the midbrain. On quantitation, patients showed a 30% mean decrease in total nigral F-18-AV-1451 volume of distribution compared with controls (P = 0.004), but there was an overlap of the individual ranges. We saw no significant correlation between symptom dominant side and contralateral nigral volume of distribution. There was no correlation between nigral F-18-AV-1451 volume of distribution and age or time since diagnosis. In the subset of 12 patients, who also had a I-123-FP-CIT scan, the mean total striatal dopamine transporter signal was decreased by 45% and the mean total F-18-AV-1451 substantia nigra volume of distribution was decreased by 33% after median disease duration of 4.7 years (0.5-12.4 years). F-18-AV-1451 positron emission tomography may be the first radiotracer to reflect the loss of pigmented neurons in the substantia nigra of parkinsonian patients. The magnitude of the nigral signal loss was smaller than the decrease in striatal dopamine transporter signal measured by dopamine transporter single photon emission computed tomography. These findings suggest a more severe loss of striatal nerve terminal function compared with neuronal cell bodies, in accordance with the post-mortem literature.
Author(s): Hansen AK, Knudsen K, Lillethorup TP, Landau AM, Parbo P, Fedorova T, Audrain H, Bender D, Ostergaard K, Brooks DJ, Borghammer P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Brain
Year: 2016
Volume: 139
Pages: 2039-2049
Print publication date: 01/07/2016
Online publication date: 05/05/2016
Acceptance date: 14/03/2016
Date deposited: 12/08/2016
ISSN (print): 0006-8950
ISSN (electronic): 1460-2156
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/aww098
DOI: 10.1093/brain/aww098
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