Modulatory Effects of Levodopa on Cerebellar Connectivity in Parkinson's Disease.

Modulatory Effects of Levodopa on Cerebellar Connectivity in Parkinson's Disease. Cerebellum. 2018 Oct 08;: Authors: Mueller K, Jech R, Ballarini T, Holiga Š, Růžička F, Piecha FA, Möller HE, Vymazal J, Růžička E, Schroeter ML Abstract Levodopa has been the mainstay of symptomatic therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD) for the last five decades. However, it is associated with the development of motor fluctuations and dyskinesia, in particular after several years of treatment. The aim of this study was to shed light on the acute brain functional reorganization in response to a single levodopa dose. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed after an overnight withdrawal of dopaminergic treatment and 1 h after a single dose of 250 mg levodopa in a group of 24 PD patients. Eigenvector centrality was calculated in both treatment states using resting-state fMRI. This offers a new data-driven and parameter-free approach, similar to Google's PageRank algorithm, revealing brain connectivity alterations due to the effect of levodopa treatment. In all PD patients, levodopa treatment led to an improvement of clinical symptoms as measured with the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale motor score (UPDRS-III). This therapeutic effect was accompanied with a major connectivity increase between cerebellar brain regions and subcortical areas of the motor system such as the thalamus, putamen, globus pallidus, and brainstem. ...
Source: Cerebellum - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Cerebellum Source Type: research