Retinal Alterations as Potential Biomarkers of Structural Brain Changes in Alzheimer's Disease Spectrum Patients.

Brain Sci

Department of Neurology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, The Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, and The State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Institute of Brain Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210008, China.

Published: March 2023

Retinal imaging being a potential biomarker for Alzheimer's disease is gradually attracting the attention of researchers. However, the association between retinal parameters and AD neuroimaging biomarkers, particularly structural changes, is still unclear. In this cross-sectional study, we recruited 25 cognitively impaired (CI) and 21 cognitively normal (CN) individuals. All subjects underwent retinal layer thickness and microvascular measurements with optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Gray matter and white matter (WM) data such as T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging, respectively, were also collected. In addition, hippocampal subfield volumes and WM tract microstructural alterations were investigated as classical AD neuroimaging biomarkers. The microvascular and retinal features and their correlation with brain structural imaging markers were further analyzed. We observed a reduction in vessel density (VD) at the inferior outer (IO) sector ( = 0.049), atrophy in hippocampal subfield volumes, such as the subiculum ( = 0.012), presubiculum ( = 0.015), molecular_layer_HP ( = 0.033), GC-ML-DG ( = 0.043) and whole hippocampus ( = 0.033) in CI patients. Altered microstructural integrity of WM tracts in CI patients was also discovered in the cingulum hippocampal part (CgH). Importantly, we detected significant associations between retinal VD and gray matter volumes of the hippocampal subfield in CI patients. These findings suggested that the retinal microvascular measures acquired by OCTA may be markers for the early prediction of AD-related structural brain changes.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10046312PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13030460DOI Listing

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