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Clinical Trial
. 2024 Jul 30;16(1):170.
doi: 10.1186/s13195-024-01539-z.

Dementia with Lewy bodies and gait neural basis: a cross-sectional study

Adele Sainsily-Cesarus #  1   2 , Elise Schmitt #  3   4 , Lionel Landre  2 , Anne Botzung  1 , Lucie Rauch  1 , Catherine Demuynck  1 , Nathalie Philippi  1   2 , Paulo Loureiro de Sousa  2 , Catherine Mutter  5 , Benjamin Cretin  1   2 , Catherine Martin-Hunyadi  1   2 , Frederic Blanc  1   2
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Dementia with Lewy bodies and gait neural basis: a cross-sectional study

Adele Sainsily-Cesarus et al. Alzheimers Res Ther. .

Abstract

Background: Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) is responsible for cognitive-behavioural disorders but also for gait disorders. The latter are thought to be related to parkinsonism, but the neural bases of these disorders are not well known, especially in the early stages. The aim of this study was to investigate by volumetric Magnetic Resonance Imaging the neuronal basis of gait disorders in DLB patients, compared to Healthy Elderly Controls and Alzheimer's Disease patients.

Methods: Clinical examination with motor assessment including 10-meter walking speed, one-leg balance and Timed Up and Go test, a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation and 3D brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging were performed on 84 DLB patients, 39 Alzheimer's Disease patients and 22 Healthy Elderly Controls. We used Statistical Parametric Mapping 12 to perform a one-sample t-test to investigate the correlation between each gait score and gray matter volume (P ≤ 0.05 corrected for family-wise error).

Results: We found a correlation for DLB patients between walking speed and gray matter decrease (P < 0.05, corrected for family-wise error) in caudate nuclei, anterior cingulate cortex, mid-cingulate cortex, hippocampi, supplementary motor area, right cerebellar cortex and left parietal operculum. We found no correlation with Timed Up and Go test and one-leg balance.

Conclusion: Gait disorders are underpinned by certain classical regions such as the cerebellum and the supplementary motor area. Our results suggest there may be a motivational and emotional component of voluntary gait in DLB subjects, underpinned by the cingulate cortex, a spatial orientation component, underpinned by hippocampi and suggest the involvement of brain processing speed and parkinsonism, underpinned by the caudate nuclei.

Trial registration: The study protocol has been registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. (NCT01876459) on June 12, 2013.

Keywords: Dementia with lewy bodies; Hippocampi; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mid-cingulate cortex; VBM; Voxel-based-morphometry; Walking speed.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flowchart of the study analyzing the neural basis of gait in dementia with Lewy bodies. DLB: Dementia with Lewy bodies, AD: Alzheimer’s Disease, MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Gray matter concentration correlated to walking speed in dementia with Lewy bodies. Walking speed correlates with bilateral local decrease gray matter concentration in the caudate nuclei, hippocampi, anterior cingulate cortex, midcingulate cortex and supplementary motor area, as well as in the right cerebellar cortex and left parietal operculum (FWE corrected, P < 0.05). L: Left; R: Right
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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