Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Apr;143(4):430-440.
doi: 10.1111/ane.13372. Epub 2020 Nov 22.

Abnormal structural connectivity in progressive supranuclear palsy-Richardson syndrome

Shweta Prasad  1   2 , Archith Rajan  3   4 , Shaik Afsar Pasha  2 , Sandhya Mangalore  5 , Jitender Saini  5 , Madhura Ingalhalikar  3   4 , Pramod Kumar Pal  2
Affiliations

Abnormal structural connectivity in progressive supranuclear palsy-Richardson syndrome

Shweta Prasad et al. Acta Neurol Scand. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Objectives: Progressive supranuclear palsy-Richardson syndrome (PSP-RS) is characterized by symmetrical parkinsonism with postural instability and frontal dysfunction. This study aims to use the whole brain structural connectome (SC) to gain insights into the underlying disconnectivity which may be implicated in the clinical features of PSP-RS.

Methods: Sixteen patients of PSP-RS and 12 healthy controls were recruited. Disease severity was quantified using PSP rating scale (PSPRS), and mini-mental scale was applied to evaluate cognition. Thirty-two direction diffusion MRIs were acquired and used to compute the structural connectome of the whole brain using deterministic fiber tracking. Group analyses were performed at the edge-wise, nodal, and global levels. Age and gender were used as nuisance covariates for all the subsequent analyses, and FDR correction was applied.

Results: Network-based statistics revealed a 34-edge network with significantly abnormal edge-wise connectivity in the patient group. Of these, 25 edges were cortical connections, of which 68% were frontal connections. Abnormal deep gray matter connections were predominantly comprised of connections between structures of the basal ganglia. The characteristic path length of the SC was lower in PSP-RS, and nodal analysis revealed abnormal degree, strength, local efficiency, betweenness centrality, and participation coefficient in several nodes.

Conclusions: Significant alterations in the structural connectivity of the whole brain connectome were observed in PSP-RS. The higher degree of abnormality observed in nodes belonging to the frontal lobe and basal ganglia substantiates the predominant frontal dysfunction and parkinsonism observed in PSP-RS. The findings of this study support the concept that PSP-RS may be a network-based disorder.

Keywords: connectivity; progressive supranuclear palsy; tractography.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Armstrong MJ. Progressive supranuclear palsy: an update. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2018;18(3):12.
    1. Williams DR, de Silva R, Paviour DC, et al. Characteristics of two distinct clinical phenotypes in pathologically proven progressive supranuclear palsy: Richardson's syndrome and PSP-parkinsonism. Brain. 2005;128(Pt 6):1247-1258.
    1. Boxer AL, Yu JT, Golbe LI, Litvan I, Lang AE, Hoglinger GU. Advances in progressive supranuclear palsy: new diagnostic criteria, biomarkers, and therapeutic approaches. Lancet Neurol. 2017;16(7):552-563.
    1. Stezin A, Lenka A, Jhunjhunwala K, Saini J, Pal PK. Advanced structural neuroimaging in progressive supranuclear palsy: where do we stand? Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2017;36:19-32.
    1. Whitwell JL, Hoglinger GU, Antonini A, et al. Radiological biomarkers for diagnosis in PSP: where are we and where do we need to be? Mov Disord. 2017;32(7):955-971.

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources