Putaminal diffusion tensor imaging measures predict disease severity across human prion diseases.

ABSTRACT: Therapeutic trials of disease-modifying agents in neurodegenerative disease typically require several hundred participants and long durations for clinical endpoints. Trials of this size are not feasible for prion diseases, rare dementia disorders associated with misfolding of prion protein. In this situation, biomarkers are particularly helpful. On diagnostic imaging, prion diseases demonstrate characteristic brain signal abnormalities on diffusion-weighted MRI. The aim of this study was to determine whether cerebral water diffusivity could be a quantitative imaging biomarker of disease severity. We hypothesized that the basal ganglia were most likely to demonstrate functionally relevant changes in diffusivity. Seventy-one subjects (37 patients and 34 controls) of whom 47 underwent serial

SUBMITTER: Hyare H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7425333 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature