VMAT2 availability in Parkinson’s disease with probable REM sleep behaviour disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) can be an early non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD) with pathology involving mainly the pontine nuclei. Beyond the brainstem, it is unclear if RBD patients comorbid with PD have more affected striatal dopamine denervation compared to PD patients unaffected by RBD (PD-RBD−). To elucidate this, we evaluated the availability of vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), an index of nigrostriatal dopamine innervation, in 15 PD patients with probable RBD (PD-RBD+), 15 PD-RBD−, and 15 age-matched healthy controls (HC) using [11C]DTBZ PET imaging. This technique measured VMAT2 availability within striatal regions of interest (ROI). A mixed effect model was used to compare the radioligand binding of VMAT2 between the three groups for each striatal ROI, while co-varying for sex, cognitive function and depression scores. Multiple regressions were also computed to predict clinical measures from group condition and VMAT2 binding within all ROIs explored. We observed a significant main effect of group condition on VMAT2 availability within the caudate, putamen, ventral striatum, globus pallidus, substantia nigra, and subthalamus. Specifically, our results revealed that PD-RBD+ had lower VMAT2 availability compared to HC in all these regions except for the subthalamus and substantia nigra, while PD-RBD− was significantly lower than HC in all these regions. PD-RBD− showed a negative relationship between motor severity and VMAT2 availability within the left caudate. Our findings reflect that both PD patient subgroups had similar denervation within the nigrostriatal pathway. There were no significant interactions detected between radioligand binding and clinical scores in PD-RBD+. Taken together, VMAT2 and striatal dopamine denervation in general may not be a significant contributor to the pathophysiology of RBD in PD patients. Future studies are encouraged to explore other underlying neural chemistry mechanisms contributing to RBD in PD patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".