Evaluation of choroidal thickness in prodromal Alzheimer's disease defined by amyloid PET.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To assess and compare the involvement of choroidal thickness (CT) in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) defined by amyloid PET and healthy controls (HC).

METHODS:

Sixty-three eyes from 34 AD patients [12 eyes (19.0%) with dementia and 51 eyes (80.9%) with MCI], positive to 11C-labelled Pittsburgh Compound-B with positron emission tomography (11C-PiB PET/CT), and the same number of sex- and age-paired HC were recruited. All participants underwent enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT) assessing CT at 14 measurements from 2 B-scans. Paired Student t-test was used to compare CT measurements between MCI, dementia and sex- and age-paired HC. A univariate generalized estimating equations model (GEE) test was performed to compare MCI and dementia individually with all HC included.

RESULTS:

Compared with HC, eyes from patients with positive 11C-PiB PET/CT showed a significant CT thinning in 5 selected locations (in foveal thickness in vertical scan, in temporal scan at 1500μm, in superior scan at 500μm and in inferior scan at 1000μm and 1500μm, p = 0.020-0.045) whilst few significant CT reduction data was reported in MCI or dementia individually versus HC. However, the GEE test identified significant CT thinning in AD compared with all HC included (p = 0.015-0.046).

CONCLUSIONS:

To our knowledge, the present study is the first measuring CT in eyes from MCI and dementia eyes positive to 11C-PiB PET/CT reporting a significant trend towards CT thinning in MCI patients which became more pronounced in dementia stage. We support further investigation involving larger and prospective OCT studies in AD population characterized with available biomarkers to describe whether choroidal vascular damage occurs specifically in prodromal stages of AD.

• Authors: Alicia López-de-Eguileta, Carmen Lage, Sara López-García, Ana Pozueta, María García-Martínez, Martha Kazimierczak, María Bravo, María de Arcocha-Torres, Ignacio Banzo, Julio Jimenez-Bonilla, Andrea Cerveró, Alexander Goikoetxea, Eloy Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Pascual Sánchez-Juan, Alfonso Casado
• Journal: PloS one (PLoS One) Vol. 15 Issue 9 Pg. e0239484 ( 2020) ISSN: 1932-6203 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 32956392 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Validation Study)

Chemical References

• 2-(4'-(methylamino)phenyl)-6-hydroxybenzothiazole
• Amyloid
• Aniline Compounds
• Carbon Radioisotopes
• Carbon-11
• Radiopharmaceuticals
• Thiazoles

Topics

• Aged
• Alzheimer Disease (diagnostic imaging, pathology)
• Amyloid (analysis)
• Aniline Compounds
• Anthropometry
• Area Under Curve
• Carbon Radioisotopes
• Case-Control Studies
• Choroid (ultrastructure)
• Cognitive Dysfunction (diagnostic imaging, pathology)
• Cross-Sectional Studies
• Disease Progression
• Early Diagnosis
• Female
• Humans
• Male
• Neuroimaging
• Observer Variation
• Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography (methods)
• Prodromal Symptoms
• Radiopharmaceuticals
• Reproducibility of Results
• Thiazoles
• Tomography, Optical Coherence