Regional dopaminergic dysfunction patterns discriminate Parkinson’s disease from multiple system atrophy parkinsonian subtype
Dan Xu, Chenhao Jia, Tianhao Zhang, Chao Ren, Wenjia Zhu, Han Wang, Li Huo · 2026
Read Regional dopaminergic dysfunction patterns discriminate Parkinson’s disease from multiple system atrophy parkinsonian subtype by Dan Xu, Chenhao Jia, Tianhao Zhang, Chao Ren, Wenjia Zhu, Han Wang, Li Huo (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13254894.txt.
Description
Dan Xu and colleagues use dopamine-system brain scans to tell two look-alike movement disorders apart in a 2026 prospective study. Parkinson's disease and the parkinsonian form of multiple system atrophy share slowness, stiffness, and balance trouble, and about a fifth of atrophy cases are misread as Parkinson's even at expert centers. The team imaged patients with 18F-DOPA PET, which measures the integrity of dopamine-producing terminals.
A new adaptive atlas let them align scans precisely without needing an MRI for each patient. Two regional signatures emerged as discriminators. Uptake in the caudate nucleus, a deep brain structure, was reduced specifically in the atrophy group compared with Parkinson's. The cerebellum also showed dopaminergic dysfunction in atrophy patients, despite their having no clinical signs pointing there. The authors present regional pattern analysis, rather than overall dopamine loss, as the way to make this scan decisive.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Dan Xu, Chenhao Jia, Tianhao Zhang, Chao Ren, Wenjia Zhu, Han Wang, Li Huo |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 29 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |