Nasal septum deviation correlates with asymmetry in Parkinson’s disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary Background Asymmetry in motor dysfunction and associated dopaminergic deficit is a common characteristic of Parkinson’s disease (PD), yet potential explanations remain mysterious. Hereby, we assessed whether asymmetry in the nasal cavity is related to dopaminergic dysfunction asymmetry in PD patients. Methods This cross-sectional, multi-center observational study included 761 PD patients from three cohorts. First, we analyzed data from the Huashan Parkinsonian PET Imaging Database (March 2011 to February 2020), which served as the primary cohort (n=333). Second, we collected de novo data from all PD inpatients in the Hongqiao Campus of Huashan Hospital as internal validation cohort (May 2023 to July 2024, n=77). Finally, we used data from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative as an external validation cohort (n=351). All cohorts included imaging data of structural MRI or CT, as well as dopaminergic neuroimaging using 11 C−CFT, 18 F−FP−CIT, or 18 F−DTBZ on PET or 123 I−DaTscan on SPECT. Nasal cavity asymmetry was assessed by visually inspecting the position of nasal septum deviation in structural MRI or CT to determine the dominant side. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed to evaluate the correlations between nasal cavity asymmetry and dopaminergic deficit asymmetry. Results In the primary cohort, 70.2% of patients exhibited consistency between the dominant side of the nasal cavity and the side with a more severe dopaminergic deficit in striatum (φ=0.40, p<0.001). The striatal−specific binding ratios of dopamine uptake were significantly lower on the side ipsilateral to the dominant nasal cavity, and a significantly inverse correlation was found between the asymmetry index of nasal cavity surface area and that of the dopaminergic deficit (r=−0.31, p<0.001). Similar patterns were observed in internal (78.6%, φ=0.57, p<0.001) and external validation cohorts (73.1%, φ=0.45, p<0.001). A stronger correlation was found in sporadic PD (φ=0.67, p<0.001) compared to genetic PD patients (φ=0.31, p=0.3). Conclusions We made a novel and robust observation that the nasal cavity asymmetry is correlated with asymmetry in striatal dopaminergic deficiency in PD patients. The finding may have significant implications for both the etiological and clinical research of PD, supporting the nasal pathway as a potential route for both environmental pathogens and PD treatment. Trial Registration Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR2400094198, and https://www.chictr.org.cn/bin/project/edit?pid=251807
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".