Longitudinal Iron Changes in the Substantia Nigra of Early-Stage Parkinson's Disease.

Authors

Guangwei Du, Christopher Sica, Sol de Jesus, Lan Kong, Richard B Mailman, Xuemei Huang

Published in

Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society. Sep 05, 2026. Epub Sep 05, 2026.

Abstract

Progression of substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) iron content in early-stage Parkinson's patients (PD) is poorly understood.
To determine if nigral iron measured by quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) with zero-referencing    can track disease progression in early-stage PD.
Thirty-four early-stage PD patients and 35 matched controls were recruited. Iron content in the SNc and related regions were obtained using QSM with zero-referencing at both baseline and 1-year follow-up, along with clinical metrics.
Of seven clinic metrics and five regional iron measures, only Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale-Part II (MDS-UPDRS-II) (P = 0.046) and SNc iron (P = 0.0025 for cerebrospinal fluid zero-referencing; P = 0.014 for whole-brain zero-referencing) showed significant changes in PD subjects in the 1-year epoch. The changes in SNc iron were also correlated with changes in MDS-UPDRS-II (P = 0.004).
Nigral iron content measured by zero-referencing QSM can be used to track disease progression in early-stage PD over the 1-year epoch. © 2026 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

PMID:
42698345
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 05 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.