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Is Hippocampal Volume a Relevant Early Marker of Dementia?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Is Hippocampal Volume a Relevant Early Marker of Dementia?

Mélissa Gentreau, Jerome J. Maller, Chantal Meslin, Fabienne Cyprien, Jorge Lopez-Castroman and Sylvaine Artero
The American journal of geriatric psychiatry, Vol.31(11), pp.932-942
11/01/2023
DOI: 10.1016/j.jagp.2023.05.015
PMID: 37394314
url
https://hal.science/hal-04153332/documentView
Open Access

Abstract

•What is the primary question addressed by this study?The study addressed a question whether hippocampal volume (HV), a key imaging marker in dementia prediction, is associated with dementia risk but possibly with aging-related cognitive decline without dementia in general population.•What is the main finding of this study?Reduced HV is associated with higher dementia risk but predicts also cognitive decline without dementiaAssociations of HV with cognitive performance are method-dependent.•What is the meaning of the finding?This study raises the question of the relevance of one HV measurement as an early marker of dementia in the general population. Hippocampal volume (HV) is a key imaging marker to improve Alzheimer's disease risk prediction. However, longitudinal studies are rare, and hippocampus may also be implicated in the subtle aging-related cognitive decline observed in dementia-free individuals. Our aim was to determine whether HV, measured by manual or automatic segmentation, is associated with dementia risk and cognitive decline in participants with and without incident dementia. At baseline, 510 dementia-free participants from the French longitudinal ESPRIT cohort underwent magnetic resonance imaging. HV was measured by manual and by automatic segmentation (FreeSurfer 6.0). The presence of dementia and cognitive functions were investigated at each follow-up (2, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 15 years). Cox proportional hazards models and linear mixed models were used to assess the association of HV with dementia risk and with cognitive decline, respectively. During the 15-years follow-up, 42 participants developed dementia. Reduced HV (regardless of the measurement method) was significantly associated with higher dementia risk and cognitive decline in the whole sample. However, only the automatically measured HV was associated with cognitive decline in dementia-free participants. These results suggest that HV can be used to predict the long-term risk of dementia but also cognitive decline in a dementia-free population. This raises the question of the relevance of HV measurement as an early marker of dementia in the general population.
 automatic segmentation cognition dementia Hippocampus manual segmentation MRI

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