AUTHOR=Gracien René-Maxime , Petrov Franca , Hok Pavel , van Wijnen Alexandra , Maiworm Michelle , Seiler Alexander , Deichmann Ralf , Baudrexel Simon 

TITLE=Multimodal Quantitative MRI Reveals No Evidence for Tissue Pathology in Idiopathic Cervical Dystonia

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2019.00914

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2019.00914

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> While in symptomatic forms of dystonia cerebral pathology is by definition present, it is unclear so far whether disease is associated with microstructural cerebral changes in idiopathic dystonia. Previous quantitative MRI (qMRI) studies assessing cerebral tissue composition in idiopathic dystonia revealed conflicting results.</p><p><bold>Objective:</bold> Using multimodal qMRI, the presented study aimed to investigate alterations in different cerebral microstructural compartments associated with idiopathic cervical dystonia <italic>in vivo</italic>.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> Mapping of T<sub>1</sub>, T<sub>2</sub>, <inline-formula><mml:math id="M1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msubsup><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>T</mml:mtext></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>*</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:msubsup></mml:math></inline-formula>, and proton density (PD) was performed in 17 patients with idiopathic cervical dystonia and 29 matched healthy control subjects. Statistical comparisons of the parametric maps between groups were conducted for various regions of interest (ROI), including major basal ganglia nuclei, the thalamus, white matter, and the cerebellum, and voxel-wise for the whole brain.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Neither whole brain voxel-wise statistics nor ROI-based analyses revealed significant group differences for any qMRI parameter under investigation.</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> The negative findings of this qMRI study argue against the presence of overt microstructural tissue change in patients with idiopathic cervical dystonia. The results seem to support a common view that idiopathic cervical dystonia might primarily resemble a functional network disease.</p>