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Early changes in the hypothalamic region in prodromal Huntington disease revealed by MRI analysis
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Early changes in the hypothalamic region in prodromal Huntington disease revealed by MRI analysis

Charlotte Soneson, Magnus Fontes, Yongxia Zhou, Vladimir Denisov, Jane S Paulsen, Deniz Kirik, Åsa Petersén and PREDICT-HD Investigators of the Huntington Study Group
Neurobiology of disease, Vol.40(3), pp.531-543
12/2010
DOI: 10.1016/j.nbd.2010.07.013
PMCID: PMC2955781
PMID: 20682340
url
https://admin.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/d380d891-3bcc-48ee-8f9e-52145f834094View
Open Access

Abstract

Huntington disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded CAG repeat. Its length can be used to estimate the time of clinical diagnosis, which is defined by overt motor symptoms. Non-motor symptoms begin before motor onset, and involve changes in hypothalamus-regulated functions such as sleep, emotion and metabolism. Therefore we hypothesized that hypothalamic changes occur already prior to the clinical diagnosis. We performed voxel-based morphometry and logistic regression analyses of cross-sectional MR images from 220 HD gene carriers and 75 controls in the Predict-HD study. We show that changes in the hypothalamic region are detectable before clinical diagnosis and that its grey matter contents alone are sufficient to distinguish HD gene carriers from control cases. In conclusion, our study shows, for the first time, that alterations in grey matter contents in the hypothalamic region occur at least a decade before clinical diagnosis in HD using MRI. ► Changes occur in the hypothalamic region in prodromal HD using MRI analysis. ► Grey matter alterations are detectable over a decade before motor symptoms in HD. ► Alterations in the hypothalamus parallel changes in the caudate and the insula. ► Mathematical models show high classification power of the hypothalamus in HD
Atrophy Basal ganglia Hypothalamus Huntingtin Neuroendocrine Imaging

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