Essential Head Tremor Is Associated with Cerebellar Vermis Atrophy: A Volumetric and Voxel-Based Morphometry MR Imaging Study

Our aim was to investigate the presence of brain gray matter (GM) abnormalities in patients with different forms of essential tremor (ET). We used optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and manually traced single region-of-interest analysis in 50 patients with familial ET and in 32 healthy subjects...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of neuroradiology : AJNR 2008-10, Vol.29 (9), p.1692-1697
Main Authors: Quattrone, A, Cerasa, A, Messina, D, Nicoletti, G, Hagberg, G.E, Lemieux, L, Novellino, F, Lanza, P, Arabia, G, Salsone, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Arm - innervation
Atrophy
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain - pathology
Cerebellum - pathology
Essential Tremor - diagnosis
Essential Tremor - genetics
Female
Head - innervation
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Investigative techniques, diagnostic techniques (general aspects)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Nervous system
Nervous system involvement in other diseases. Miscellaneous
Neurologic Examination
Neurology
Organ Size
Radiodiagnosis. Nmr imagery. Nmr spectrometry
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Our aim was to investigate the presence of brain gray matter (GM) abnormalities in patients with different forms of essential tremor (ET). We used optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and manually traced single region-of-interest analysis in 50 patients with familial ET and in 32 healthy subjects. Thirty patients with ET had tremor of the arms (a-ET), whereas the remaining 20 patients had both arm and head tremor (h-ET). VBM showed marked atrophy of the cerebellar vermis in the patients with h-ET with respect to healthy subjects (P(corrected) < .001). Patients with a-ET showed a trend toward a vermal GM volume loss that did not reach a significant difference with respect to healthy controls (P(uncorrected) < .01). The region-of-interest analysis showed a reduction of the cerebellar volume (CV) in the h-ET group (98.2 +/- 13.6 mm(3)) compared with healthy controls (110.5 +/- 15.5 mm(3), P < .012) as well as in the entire vermal area (790.3 +/- 94.5 mm(2), 898.6 +/- 170.6 mm(2), P < .04 in h-ET and control groups, respectively). Atrophy of the cerebellar vermis detected in patients with h-ET strongly supports the evidence for the involvement of the cerebellum in the pathophysiology of ET. The lack of a significant CV loss observed in patients with a-ET suggests that a-ET and h-ET might represent distinct subtypes of the same disease.
ISSN:0195-6108
1936-959X
DOI:10.3174/ajnr.A1190