Cortical hypometabolism and hypoperfusion in Parkinson's disease is extensive: Probably even at early disease stages

Per Borghammer, Mallar Chakravarty, Kristjana Yr Jonsdottir, Noriko Sato, Hiroshi Matsuda, Kengo Ito, Yutaka Arahata, Takashi Kato, Albert Gjedde

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

94 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent cerebral blood flow (CBF) and glucose consumption (CMRglc) studies of Parkinson's disease (PD) revealed conflicting results. Using simulated data, we previously demonstrated that the often-reported subcortical hypermetabolism in PD could be explained as an artifact of biased global mean (GM) normalization, and that low-magnitude, extensive cortical hypometabolism is best detected by alternative data-driven normalization methods. Thus, we hypothesized that PD is characterized by extensive cortical hypometabolism but no concurrent widespread subcortical hypermetabolism and tested it on three independent samples of PD patients. We compared SPECT CBF images of 32 earlystage and 33 late-stage PD patients with that of 60 matched controls. We also compared PET FDG images from 23 latestage PD patients with that of 13 controls. Three different normalizationmethods were compared: (1)GMnormalization, (2) cerebellum normalization, (3) reference cluster normalization (Yakushev et al.). We employed standard voxel-based statistics (fMRIstat) and principal component analysis (SSM). Additionally, we performed a meta-analysis of all quantitative CBF and CMRglc studies in the literature to investigate whether the global mean (GM) values in PD are decreased. Voxelbased analysis with GM normalization and the SSM method performed similarly, i.e., both detected decreases in small cortical clusters and concomitant increases in extensive subcortical regions. Cerebellum normalization revealed more widespread cortical decreases but no subcortical increase. In all comparisons, the Yakushev method detected nearly identical patterns of very extensive cortical hypometabolism. Lastly, the meta-analyses demonstrated that global CBF and CMRglc values are decreased in PD. Based on the results, we conclude that PD most likely has widespread cortical hypometabolism, even at early disease stages. In contrast, extensive subcortical hypermetabolism is probably not a feature of PD.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)303-317
Number of pages15
JournalBrain Structure and Function
Volume214
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2010
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • CBF
  • Glucose
  • Normalization
  • PET
  • Parkinson's disease
  • SPECT

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Anatomy
  • General Neuroscience
  • Histology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Cortical hypometabolism and hypoperfusion in Parkinson's disease is extensive: Probably even at early disease stages'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this