Fiber-specific white matter alterations in early-stage tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Using a fixel-based analysis (FBA), we assessed the fiber-specific white matter (WM) alterations in nonmedicated patients with early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD) with tremor-dominant (TD; n = 53; mean age, 61.7 ± 8.7 years) and postural instability and gait disorder (PIGD; n = 27; mean age, 57.8 ± 8.1 years) motor subtypes and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC; n = 43; mean age, 61.6 ± 9.2 years) from Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative dataset. FBA revealed significantly increased macrostructural fiber cross section and a combination of fiber density and cross section metrics within the corticospinal tract in patients with TD-PD compared with HC. Nonetheless, no significant changes in FBA-derived metrics were found in patients with PIGD-PD compared with HC or patients with TD-PD. Our results may provide evidence of WM neural compensation mechanisms in patients with TD-PD marked by increases in fiber bundle size and the ability to relay information between brain regions.