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The intrinsically restructured fovea is correlated with contrast sensitivity loss in Parkinson’s disease

  • Neurology and Preclinical Neurological Studies - Original Article
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Abstract

Foveal structure that is specified by the thickness, depth and the overall shape of the fovea is a promising tool to qualify and quantify retinal pathology in Parkinson’s disease. To determine the model variable that is best suited for discriminating Parkinson’s disease eyes from those of healthy controls and to assess correlations between impaired contrast sensitivity and foveal shape we characterized the fovea in 48 Parkinson’s disease patients and 45 control subjects by optical coherence tomography (OCT). The model quantifies structural changes in the fovea of Parkinson’s disease patients that are correlated with a decline in contrast sensitivity. Retinal foveal remodeling may serve as a parameter for vision deficits in Parkinson’s disease. Whether foveal remodeling reflects dopaminergic driven pathology or rather both dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic pathology has to be investigated in longitudinal studies.

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Acknowledgements

A. Markopoulou from NorthShore University Health System, Evanston IL, USA participated in the study. Due to methodological reasons only the measurements from Ulm University were used for the final evaluation of the data.

Funding

The research was supported by the Michael J. Fox Foundations for Parkinson’s Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Ulm University, Oberer Eselsberg 45, 89081, Ulm, Germany

    Elmar H. Pinkhardt, Jan Kassubek & Albert C. Ludolph

  2. Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Sofya Glazman & Ivan Bodis-Wollner

  3. SUNY Eye Institute, State University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Samantha Slotnick & Ivan Bodis-Wollner

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Brooklyn, NY, 11203, USA

    Yin Ding & Ivan Selesnick

Authors
  1. Elmar H. Pinkhardt
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  2. Yin Ding
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  3. Samantha Slotnick
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  4. Jan Kassubek
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  5. Albert C. Ludolph
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  6. Sofya Glazman
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  7. Ivan Selesnick
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  8. Ivan Bodis-Wollner
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Correspondence to Ivan Bodis-Wollner.

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All authors have no conflicts of interest and no competing interests.

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All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committees of the University of Ulm (36/13), the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of NorthShore University HealthSystem (EH13-077) and the SUNY Downstate Medical Center Institutional Review Board (418805) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Written informed consent was obtained from each subject.

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Pinkhardt, E.H., Ding, Y., Slotnick, S. et al. The intrinsically restructured fovea is correlated with contrast sensitivity loss in Parkinson’s disease. J Neural Transm 127, 1275–1283 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-020-02224-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-020-02224-9

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