Wang DW, Ding SL, Bian XL, Zhou SY, Yang H, Wang P. Diagnostic value of amygdala volume on structural magnetic resonance imaging in Alzheimer’s disease. World J Clin Cases 2021; 9(18): 4627-4636 [PMID: 34222429 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i18.4627]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Ping Wang, PhD, Associate Chief Physician, Department of Neurology, The Second Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, No. 247 Beiyuan Street, Jinan 250033, Shandong Province, China. wping0108@163.com
Research Domain of This Article
Clinical Neurology
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
De-Wei Wang, Xian-Li Bian, Hui Yang, Ping Wang, Department of Neurology, The Second Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250033, Shandong Province, China
Shou-Luan Ding, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Institute of Medical Sciences, The Second Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250033, Shandong Province, China
Shi-Yue Zhou, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Wang P designed the study; Wang DW wrote the paper; Bian XL, Zhou SY, and Yang H drafted the work and collected the data; Ding SL collected and analyzed the data.
Supported byThe Young Talents Fund of the Second Hospital of Shandong University, No. 2018YT16; Rongxiang Regenerative Medicine Foundation of Shandong University, No. 2019SDRX-09.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Medical Research Ethics Committee of the Second Hospital of Shandong University.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares that there is no conflict of interest between them.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ping Wang, PhD, Associate Chief Physician, Department of Neurology, The Second Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, No. 247 Beiyuan Street, Jinan 250033, Shandong Province, China. wping0108@163.com
Received: March 2, 2021 Peer-review started: March 2, 2021 First decision: April 4, 2021 Revised: April 6, 2021 Accepted: April 26, 2021 Article in press: April 26, 2021 Published online: June 26, 2021 Processing time: 101 Days and 0.7 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Amygdala is closely related to emotion and memory. The dysfunction of amygdala plays an important role in the emotional disorder of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). There are few studies evaluating the degree of atrophy of amygdala measured by structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI).
Research motivation
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic value of amygdala on sMRI for AD.
Research objectives
In this study, the amygdala volumes were measured by sMRI both in AD patients and controls to evaluate the diagnostic value of amygdala. The correlation between amygdala atrophy and clinical features of AD was also analyzed.
Research methods
Twenty-two AD patients and twenty-six controls were enrolled in this study. Their amygdala volumes were measured and analyzed using a set of image analysis software. All subjects received a cranial MRI scan and underwent neuropsychological tests. The mental and behavioral symptoms of all AD patients and the severity of the symptoms was graded.
Research results
The bilateral amygdala volumes of AD patients were significantly lower than those of the controls. The sensitivity of the left and right amygdala volumes in diagnosing AD was 80.8% and 88.5%, respectively. The amygdala atrophy was more serious in AD patients with neuropsychiatric symptoms including irritability, sleep difficulties, apathy and hallucination.
Research conclusions
In this study, we found that the bilateral amygdala volumes of AD patients were significantly smaller than those of the controls, and were positively correlated with the hippocampal volumes, consistent with previous reports. In addition, the atrophy of the amygdala was more serious in those with neuropsychiatric symptoms. This study confirmed that the amygdala is involved in the mental symptoms of AD.
Research perspectives
It is necessary to compare the amygdala volume in other types of dementia in the future, in order to improve the specificity of amygdala for the diagnosis of AD.
