Objectives

Vagus nerve (VN) has been suggested as one of the major routes of Parkinson's disease (PD) progression from enteric nervous system to brain. Therefore, the recent studies have investigated the VN structurally, with a focus on the changes in its size in PD patients using high-frequency ultrasonography. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate VN size via ultrasound in PD compared to controls.

Methods

Totally, five studies were included with a total of 238 participants (128 PD patients and 111 controls).

Results

The estimate mean difference in four studies showed that the VN CSA was smaller in PD patients with 0.29 mm² (95% CI, −0.52 to −0.06) and 0.23 mm² (95% CI, −0.42 to −0.05) for right and left VNs respectively. The test for overall effect was significant for both measurements (p = 0.01).

Conclusions

This review reveals that there is a degree of vagus nerve atrophy in PD which could be detected sonographically with high confidence, thus can be used as a marker for vagus neuronal lesion or neuropathy. Further studies are needed to examine its clinical correlation thoroughly.

中文翻译：

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帕金森病迷走神经超声检查：系统评价和荟萃分析

目标

迷走神经 (VN) 被认为是帕金森病 (PD) 从肠神经系统进展到大脑的主要途径之一。因此，最近的研究从结构上研究了 VN，重点是使用高频超声检查 PD 患者中 VN 的大小变化。该系统评价和荟萃分析旨在通过与对照组相比在 PD 中通过超声评估 VN 大小。

方法

总共包括五项研究，共有 238 名参与者（128 名 PD 患者和 111 名对照组）。

结果

在四项研究估计平均差异表明，VN CSA在PD患者0.29毫米较小²（95％CI，-0.52到-0.06）和0.23毫米²（95％CI，-0.42到-0.05）用于右眼和分别离开了 VN。两种测量的总体效果检验均显着（p = 0.01）。

结论

该综述表明，PD 中存在一定程度的迷走神经萎缩，可以通过超声检查高度可信地检测到，因此可用作迷走神经元病变或神经病变的标志物。需要进一步研究以彻底检查其临床相关性。