White Matter Microstructure Changes in the Thalamus in Parkinson Disease with Depression: A Diffusion Tensor MR Imaging Study

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Fig 1.
Illustration of regions of difference in patients with DPD and NDPD in the bilateral thalami. A, Standard MNI 152 T1 brain images (in axial and coronal directions) are overlaid with the statistically significant differing regions (in red). FA in the mediodorsal thalamus differs in patients with DPD compared with patients with NDPD. B, Scatterplots show the mean FA values in the detected significant regions for every subject in the DPD and NDPD groups. Blue lines denote the mean values for each group. Asterisks indicate significant differences between these 2 groups with P < .005.
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Fig 2.
Scatterplots with trend lines showing the correlations of diffusion quantities (FA and MD) with HAMD for 32 PD subjects in the right and left mediodorsal thalami. Green represents patients with NDPD; blue represents patients with DPD. The asterisks indicate that a significant negative correlation was found between FA and HAMD.

Table 1:

Clinical and demographic characteristics of patients

Groups	DPD (n = 14)	NDPD (n = 18)	P Value^a
Sex (M/F)	4/10	10/8	NS
Age (yr)	65.28 ± 8.89	61.05 ± 10.17	NS
PD duration	6.29 ± 5.51	5.67 ± 2.57	NS
MMSE	29.5 ± 0.7	29.2 ± 1.0	NS
UPDRS	39.04 ± 22.28	33.83 ± 15.09	NS
H-Y	1.96 ± 0.99	1.83 ± 0.75	NS
HAMD	15.64 ± 4.21	4.44 ± 2.14	<.001
LEDD (mg/day)	315 ± 201	363 ± 197	NS

a Unpaired 2-tailed t tests were used for parametric comparison of data between the 2 groups for age, PD duration, MMSE, UPDRS, H-Y, HAMD, and LEDD; The Mann-Whitney U test was used for nonparametric comparison of sex between the 2 groups. Significance was set at P <. 05.

Table 2:

Diffusion quantity comparison between patients with DPD and those with NDPD

Mediodorsal Thalamus	mFA		t Value^a	P Value	mMD (×10⁻⁴ mm²/s)		t Value^a	P Value
Mediodorsal Thalamus	DPD	NDPD	t Value^a	P Value	DPD	NDPD	t Value^a	P Value
Right	0.23 ± 0.03	0.27 ± 0.04	−3.300	.003^b	8.92 ± 2.06	8.26 ± 1.22	1.061	.301
Left	0.26 ± 0.02	0.30 ± 0.03	−3.463	.002^b	8.27 ± 1.03	7.97 ± 0.71	0.924	.365