Morphometric and metabolic evidence for preclinical compensation in Parkin-associated parkinsonism

There is little knowledge about in vivo changes in the human brain that precede the onset of parkinsonism. In this study we sought to investigate potential preclinical changes in brain tissue in asymptomatic carriers of Parkin mutations using voxel-based morphometry and to compare those changes with the sites of chronic metabolic dysfunction identified previously in same patients group using 18-fluorodopa (FDOPA) PET. In 13 asymptomatic right-handed carriers of heterozygous mutations in the Parkin gene and 13 age-matched right-handed healthy structural MR scanning using a T1-weighted FLASH 3D MR sequence (TE=5 m…