Monoamine transporter availability in Parkinson’s disease patients with or without depression

Abstract

Our data indicate that depression in PD is associated with a more pronounced loss of striatal dopamine transporter availability that is most likely secondary to increased dopaminergic degeneration. In addition, depressed PD patients have a lower availability of midbrain/brainstem monoamine transporters than nondepressed PD patients. These findings provide in vivo evidence in support of the known post-mortem data demonstrating more extensive nerve cell loss in PD with depression and indicate that SPECT imaging can help to identify pathophysiological changes underlying nonmotor symptoms in this common movement disorder.

Depression in mild dementia: associations with diagnosis, APOE genotype and clinical features

“…Consistent with this hypothesis, depression in PD was associated with a more pronounced loss of dopamine transporter availability in the striatum in PD (Hesse et al, 2009) and in the right nucleus caudatus in DLB (Roselli et al, 2009), most likely secondary to dopaminergic degeneration. However, the lack of association with parkinsonism in our study argues against an association between depression and striatal dopaminergic deficits, although an association with pre-frontal dopaminergic deficit is possible.…”

Depression, anxiety, and apathy in Parkinson's disease: insights from neuroimaging studies

“…Of the 38 studies on depression, 33 reported findings from one single imaging modality: 19 used either PET [11, 12, 13,15, 16, 17, 18, 19] or SPECT 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 techniques, four used T1‐weighted imaging 31, 32, 33, three used DTI 34, 35, 36, six used resting state functional MRI (RS‐FMRI) 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and two used TCS methods 43, 44. The remaining four of the 38 studies reported findings from structural T1‐weighted imaging plus another imaging method, including PET 14, DTI 45, task FMRI 46 and RS‐FMRI 47, respectively.…”

Assessing the Optimal Time Point for the Measurement of Extrastriatal Serotonin Transporter Binding with 123I-FP-CIT SPECT in Healthy, Male Subjects

“…The relative anatomic segregation between striatal DAT and extrastriatal SERT binding sets the condition for 123 I-FP-CIT SPECT studies to examine also SERT in vivo. Interestingly, recent clinical FP-CIT SPECT studies showed not only loss of striatal DAT but also loss of midbrain SERT binding in dementia with Lewy bodies and in Parkinson patients with depression (6,7). In these 2 studies, 123 I-FP-CIT binding in SERT-rich areas was measured 3 h after injection, but it is not known whether this time point is optimal for assessing FP-CIT binding to SERT.…”