Authors: Raffaele Nardone Yvonne Höller Aljosha Thomschewski Alexander Baden Kunz Piergiorgio Lochner Stefan Golaszewski Eugen Trinka Francesco Brigo
Publish Date: 2014/03/28
Volume: 121, Issue: 10, Pages: 1313-1320
Abstract
Shortlatency afferent inhibition SAI technique gives the opportunity to noninvasively test an inhibitory circuit in the human cerebral motor cortex that depends mainly on central cholinergic activity Important SAI abnormalities have been reported in both patients with Alzheimer disease AD and cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy CADASIL a model of “pure” vascular dementia VD Interestingly a normalization of SAI was observed in AD after levodopa ldopa administration We aimed to determine whether the pharmacological manipulation of the dopaminergic system can also interfere with SAI test in CADASIL patients compared with AD patients and healthy controls SAI was found to be significantly reduced in both patient groups lDopa significantly increased SAI in the AD patients while it failed to restore SAI abnormality in CADASIL patients Therefore ldopamediated changes on SAI in AD patients seem to be a specific effect The present study supports the notion that relationship between acetylcholine and dopamine systems may be specifically abnormal in AD lDopa challenge may thus be able to differentiate the patients with AD or a mixed form of dementia from those with “pure” VD
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