Objective

To assess and compare the involvement of choroidal thickness (CT) in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) defined by amyloid PET and healthy controls (HC).

Methods

Sixty-three eyes from 34 AD patients [12 eyes (19.0%) with dementia and 51 eyes (80.9%) with MCI], positive to ¹¹C-labelled Pittsburgh Compound-B with positron emission tomography (¹¹C-PiB PET/CT), and the same number of sex- and age-paired HC were recruited. All participants underwent enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT) assessing CT at 14 measurements from 2 B-scans. Paired Student t-test was used to compare CT measurements between MCI, dementia and sex- and age-paired HC. A univariate generalized estimating equations model (GEE) test was performed to compare MCI and dementia individually with all HC included.

Results

Compared with HC, eyes from patients with positive ¹¹C-PiB PET/CT showed a significant CT thinning in 5 selected locations (in foveal thickness in vertical scan, in temporal scan at 1500μm, in superior scan at 500μm and in inferior scan at 1000μm and 1500μm, p = 0.020–0.045) whilst few significant CT reduction data was reported in MCI or dementia individually versus HC. However, the GEE test identified significant CT thinning in AD compared with all HC included (p = 0.015–0.046).

Conclusions

To our knowledge, the present study is the first measuring CT in eyes from MCI and dementia eyes positive to ¹¹C-PiB PET/CT reporting a significant trend towards CT thinning in MCI patients which became more pronounced in dementia stage. We support further investigation involving larger and prospective OCT studies in AD population characterized with available biomarkers to describe whether choroidal vascular damage occurs specifically in prodromal stages of AD.

中文翻译：

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淀粉样蛋白PET定义的前驱性阿尔茨海默氏病脉络膜厚度的评估。

目的

评估和比较由淀粉样蛋白PET和健康对照组（HC）引起的阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）引起的轻度认知障碍（MCI）和痴呆症患者的脉络膜厚度（CT）的影响。

方法

来自34位AD患者的六十三只眼[痴呆症为12眼（19.0％），MCI为51眼（80.9％）]，对¹¹ C标记的匹兹堡化合物B呈正电子发射断层扫描（¹¹ C-PiB PET / CT ），并且招募了相同数量的性别和年龄配对的HC。所有参与者均接受了增强的深度成像光学相干断层扫描（EDI-OCT），以来自2次B扫描的14次测量评估CT。配对学生t检验用于比较MCI，痴呆症和性别配对和年龄配对的HC之间的CT测量。进行了单变量广义估计方程模型（GEE）测试，以比较包含所有HC的MCI和痴呆。

结果

与HC相比，来自¹¹ C-PiB PET / CT阳性的患者的眼睛在5个选定部位显着CT变薄（垂直扫描的中央凹厚度，1500μm的颞扫描，500μm的上扫和1000μm的下扫和1500μm，p = 0.020-0.045），而与HC相比，MCI或痴呆中很少有明显的CT降低数据。但是，GEE测试发现与所有HC相比，AD的CT明显变薄（p = 0.015-0.046）。

结论

据我们所知，本研究是首次测量MCI和¹¹ C-PiB PET / CT阳性的痴呆症眼睛的CT，报告了MCI患者CT变薄的显着趋势，该趋势在痴呆症阶段更为明显。我们支持对AD人群进行更大规模和前瞻性OCT研究的进一步研究，这些研究具有可用的生物标记物，以描述脉络膜血管损伤是否特别发生在AD前驱期。