Cerebral and extracranial neurodegeneration are strongly coupled in Parkinson's disease

In idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), a generalized Lewy body type-degeneration in the brain as well as extracranial organs was identified. It is unclear, whether cerebral Lewy body type-degeneration and extracranial Lewy body type-degeneration in PD are coupled or not. To address this question, cerebral [123I]FP-CIT SPECT – to quantify cerebral nigrostriatal dopaminergic degeneration – and myocardial [123I]MIBG scintigraphy – to quantify extracranial myocardial sympathetic degeneration – were performed in 95 PD patients and 20 healthy controls. At each Hoehn and Yahr stage separately, myocardial MIBG uptake c…