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Frontotemporal degeneration in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): a longitudinal MRI one-year study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2020

Francesca Trojsi Open the ORCID record for Francesca Trojsi [Opens in a new window] ,
Federica Di Nardo ,
Mattia Siciliano ,
Giuseppina Caiazzo ,
Cinzia Femiano ,
Carla Passaniti ,
Dario Ricciardi ,
Antonio Russo ,
Alvino Bisecco  and
Sabrina Esposito
...Show all authors
Francesca Trojsi*
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Federica Di Nardo
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Mattia Siciliano
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Giuseppina Caiazzo
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Cinzia Femiano
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Carla Passaniti
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Dario Ricciardi
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Antonio Russo
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Alvino Bisecco
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Sabrina Esposito
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Maria Rosaria Monsurrò
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Mario Cirillo
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
Gabriella Santangelo
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Caserta, Italy
Fabrizio Esposito
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry, Scuola Medica Salernitana, University of Salerno, Baronissi, Italy
Gioacchino Tedeschi
Affiliation:
Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences; MRI Research Center SUN-FISM, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy
*
*Author for correspondence: Francesca Trojsi, MD, PhD, Email: francesca.trojsi@unicampania.it
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Abstract

Objective

Advanced neuroimaging techniques may offer the potential to monitor disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative, multisystem disease that still lacks therapeutic outcome measures. We aim to investigate longitudinal functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) changes in a cohort of patients with ALS monitored for one year after diagnosis.

Methods

Resting state functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and voxel-based morphometry analyses were performed in 22 patients with ALS examined by six-monthly MRI scans over one year.

Results

During the follow-up period, patients with ALS showed reduced functional connectivity only in some extramotor areas, such as the middle temporal gyrus in the left frontoparietal network after six months and in the left middle frontal gyrus in the default mode network after one year without showing longitudinal changes of cognitive functions. Moreover, after six months, we reported in the ALS group a decreased fractional anisotropy (P = .003, Bonferroni corrected) in the right uncinate fasciculus. Conversely, we did not reveal significant longitudinal changes of functional connectivity in the sensorimotor network, as well as of gray matter (GM) atrophy or of DTI metrics in motor areas, although clinical measures of motor disability showed significant decline throughout the three time points.

Conclusion

Our findings highlighted that progressive impairment of extramotor frontotemporal networks may precede the appearance of executive and language dysfunctions and GM changes in ALS. Functional connectivity changes in cognitive resting state networks might represent candidate radiological markers of disease progression.

Keywords

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosisfrontotemporal degenerationresting state functional MRIdiffusion tensor imagingvoxel-based morphometryECAS
Type
Original Research
Information
CNS Spectrums , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , June 2021 , pp. 258 - 267
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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