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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neural Circuits
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fncir.2024.1503841
This article is part of the Research Topic Chemical Senses in Health and Disease View all articles

Specific Structural Changes in Parkinson's Disease-Related Olfactory Dysfunction Compared to Others Forms of Olfactory Dysfunction.

Provisionally accepted
Sarah Brosse Sarah Brosse 1Cécilia Tremblay Cécilia Tremblay 2Inés Mérida Inés Mérida 3Johannes Frasnelli Johannes Frasnelli 1,4*
  • 1 Département d'anatomie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada
  • 2 Civin Laboratory for Neuropathology, Banner Sun Health Research Institute, Sun City, United States
  • 3 Centre d'Etude et de Recherche Multimodal et Pluridisciplinaire en Imagerie du Vivant (CERMEP), Bron, France
  • 4 Research Center of the Sacré-Coeur Hospital of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Context: Olfactory dysfunction (OD) is a common early symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, OD is not specific to PD, as approximatively 20% of the general population exhibit different forms of OD. To use olfactory measures for early Parkinson screening, it is crucial to distinguish PD-related OD from Non-Parkinsonian OD (NPOD). Objectives and hypothesis: This study aimed to compare the structural changes associated with PD-related OD (n=15) with NPOD (n=15), focusing on grey matter volumes and white matter fiber integrity in chemosensory regions. We hypothesized that PD-related OD presents specific structural alterations in these regions.Methods: Participants underwent a 3T MRI scan, which included anatomical T1 and diffusion-weighted imaging. Grey and white matter integrity were assessed using both whole-brain analyses (voxel-based morphometry -VBM and tract-based spatial statistics -TBSS, respectively) and localized approaches, including regions of interest and tractography. Results: PD patients exhibited significantly higher grey matter volume in the left insula using restricted regions-of-interest analyses, while no other significant grey or white matter differences were found between groups. Conclusion: Structural imaging of the grey matter, particularly the insula, but not of white matter, differentiates PD-related OD from NPOD.

    Keywords: Parkinson's disease, olfactory dysfunction, Trigeminal system, Grey Matter, white matter, insula

    Received: 29 Sep 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Brosse, Tremblay, Mérida and Frasnelli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Johannes Frasnelli, Département d'anatomie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, G9A 5H7, Quebec, Canada

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