Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease

Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease

White matter abnormalities have been shown in presymptomatic and symptomatic Huntington’s disease (HD) subjects using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) methods. The largest white matter tract, the corpus callosum (CC), has been shown to be particularly vulnerable; h...

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Main Authors: Phillips, Owen, Sanchez-Castaneda, Cristina, Elifani, Francesca, Maglione, Vittorio, Di Pardo, Alba, Caltagirone, Carlo, Squitieri, Ferdinando, Sabatini, Umberto, Di Paola, Margherita
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3760905/
id pubmed-3760905
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-37609052013-09-09 Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease Phillips, Owen Sanchez-Castaneda, Cristina Elifani, Francesca Maglione, Vittorio Di Pardo, Alba Caltagirone, Carlo Squitieri, Ferdinando Sabatini, Umberto Di Paola, Margherita Research Article White matter abnormalities have been shown in presymptomatic and symptomatic Huntington’s disease (HD) subjects using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) methods. The largest white matter tract, the corpus callosum (CC), has been shown to be particularly vulnerable; however, little work has been done to investigate the regional specificity of tract abnormalities in the CC. Thus, this study examined the major callosal tracts by applying DTI-based tractography. Using TrackVis, a previously defined region of interest tractography method parcellating CC into seven major tracts based on target region was applied to 30 direction DTI data collected from 100 subjects: presymptomatic HD (Pre-HD) subjects (n = 25), HD patients (n = 25) and healthy control subjects (n = 50). Tractography results showed decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased radial diffusivity (RD) across broad regions of the CC in Pre-HD subjects. Similar though more severe deficits were seen in HD patients. In Pre-HD and HD, callosal FA and RD were correlated with Disease Burden/CAG repeat length as well as motor (UHDRSI) and cognitive (URDRS2) assessments. These results add evidence that CC pathways are compromised prior to disease onset with possible demyelination occurring early in the disease and suggest that CAG repeat length is a contributing factor to connectivity deficits. Furthermore, disruption of these callosal pathways potentially contributes to the disturbances of motor and cognitive processing that characterize HD. Public Library of Science 2013-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3760905/ /pubmed/24019913 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073280 Text en © 2013 Phillips et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Phillips, Owen
Sanchez-Castaneda, Cristina
Elifani, Francesca
Maglione, Vittorio
Di Pardo, Alba
Caltagirone, Carlo
Squitieri, Ferdinando
Sabatini, Umberto
Di Paola, Margherita
spellingShingle Phillips, Owen
Sanchez-Castaneda, Cristina
Elifani, Francesca
Maglione, Vittorio
Di Pardo, Alba
Caltagirone, Carlo
Squitieri, Ferdinando
Sabatini, Umberto
Di Paola, Margherita
Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
author_facet Phillips, Owen
Sanchez-Castaneda, Cristina
Elifani, Francesca
Maglione, Vittorio
Di Pardo, Alba
Caltagirone, Carlo
Squitieri, Ferdinando
Sabatini, Umberto
Di Paola, Margherita
author_sort Phillips, Owen
title Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
title_short Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
title_full Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
title_fullStr Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
title_full_unstemmed Tractography of the Corpus Callosum in Huntington’s Disease
title_sort tractography of the corpus callosum in huntington’s disease
description White matter abnormalities have been shown in presymptomatic and symptomatic Huntington’s disease (HD) subjects using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) methods. The largest white matter tract, the corpus callosum (CC), has been shown to be particularly vulnerable; however, little work has been done to investigate the regional specificity of tract abnormalities in the CC. Thus, this study examined the major callosal tracts by applying DTI-based tractography. Using TrackVis, a previously defined region of interest tractography method parcellating CC into seven major tracts based on target region was applied to 30 direction DTI data collected from 100 subjects: presymptomatic HD (Pre-HD) subjects (n = 25), HD patients (n = 25) and healthy control subjects (n = 50). Tractography results showed decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased radial diffusivity (RD) across broad regions of the CC in Pre-HD subjects. Similar though more severe deficits were seen in HD patients. In Pre-HD and HD, callosal FA and RD were correlated with Disease Burden/CAG repeat length as well as motor (UHDRSI) and cognitive (URDRS2) assessments. These results add evidence that CC pathways are compromised prior to disease onset with possible demyelination occurring early in the disease and suggest that CAG repeat length is a contributing factor to connectivity deficits. Furthermore, disruption of these callosal pathways potentially contributes to the disturbances of motor and cognitive processing that characterize HD.
publisher Public Library of Science
publishDate 2013
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3760905/
_version_ 1612007993820315648

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