Author Correction: Genetic factors affecting dopaminergic deterioration during the premotor stage of Parkinson disease

Erratum for: Genetic factors affecting dopaminergic deterioration during the premotor stage of Parkinson disease. Lee MJ, Pak K, Kim HK, Nudelman KN, Kim JH, Kim YH, Kang J, Baek MS, Lyoo CH. NPJ Parkinsons Dis. 2021 Nov 26;7(1):104. doi: 10.1038/s41531-021-00250-2. PMID: 3483696

Four distinct trajectories of tau deposition identified in Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by the spread of tau pathology throughout the cerebral cortex. This spreading pattern was thought to be fairly consistent across individuals, although recent work has demonstrated substantial variability in the population with AD. Using tau-positron emission tomography scans from 1,612 individuals, we identified 4 distinct spatiotemporal trajectories of tau pathology, ranging in prevalence from 18 to 33%. We replicated previously described limbic-predominant and medial temporal lobe-sparing patterns, while also discovering posterior and lateral temporal patterns resembling atypical clinical variants of AD. These ‘subtypes’ were stable during longitudinal follow-up and were replicated in a separate sample using a different radiotracer. The subtypes presented with distinct demographic and cognitive profiles and differing longitudinal outcomes. Additionally, network diffusion models implied that pathology originates and spreads through distinct corticolimbic networks in the different subtypes. Together, our results suggest that variation in tau pathology is common and systematic, perhaps warranting a re-examination of the notion of ‘typical AD’ and a revisiting of tau pathological staging.J.W.V. acknowledges support from the government of Canada through a tri-council Vanier Canada Graduate Doctoral fellowship from the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and the Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives initiative, and from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (no. T32MH019112). A.L.Y. is supported by a Medical Research Council Skills Development Fellowship (MR/T027800/1). N.P.O. is a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow (no. MR/S03546X/1). N.P.O. and D.C.A. acknowledge support from the UK National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, and D.C.A. acknowledges support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant no. EP/M020533/1. M.J.G. is supported by the Miguel Servet program (no. CP19/00031) and a research grant (no. PI20/00613) of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional. R.L.J. acknowledges support from the NIH (no. K99AG065501). This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant no. 666992. The BioFINDER studies are supported by the Swedish Research Council (no. 2016-00906), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (no. 2017-0383), the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (no. 2015.0125), the Strategic Research Area MultiPark (Multidisciplinary Research in Parkinson’s disease) at Lund University, the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation (no. AF-939932), the Swedish Brain Foundation (no. FO2019-0326), the Swedish Parkinson Foundation (no. 1280/20), the Skåne University Hospital Foundation (no. 2020-O000028), Regionalt Forskningsstöd (no. 2020-0314) and the Swedish Federal Government under the ALF agreement (no. 2018-Projekt0279). The Tau PET study in Gangnam Severance Hospital was supported by a grant from the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (nos. NRF2018R1D1A1B07049386 and NRF2020R1F1A1076154) and a grant from the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (grant no. HI18C1159). We also thank B. L. Miller, H. J. Rosen, M. Gorno Tempini and W. Jagust for supporting the UCSF tau-PET studies, which were funded through the following sources: National Institute on Aging (NIA) no. R01 AG045611 (G.D.R.), no. P50 AG23501 (B.L.M., H.J.R., G.D.R.), no. P01 AG019724 (B.L.M., H.J.R., G.D.R.). The precursor of 18F-flortaucipir was provided by AVID Radiopharmaceuticals. The precursor of 18F-flutemetamol was sponsored by GE Healthcare. The precursor of 18F-RO948 was provided by Roche. Data collection and sharing for this project were funded by ADNI (NIH grant no. U01 AG024904) and Department of Defense ADNI (award no. W81XWH-12-2-0012). ADNI is funded by the NIA, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and through generous contributions from the following: AbbVie, Alzheimer’s Association; Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation; Araclon Biotech; Bioclinica; Biogen; Bristol Myers Squibb; CereSpir; Cogstate; Eisai; Elan Pharmaceuticals; Eli Lilly and Company; EUROIMMUN; F. Hoffmann-La Roche and its affiliated company Genentech; Fujirebio; GE Healthcare; IXICO; Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy Research Development; Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Development; Lumosity; Lundbeck; Merck; Meso Scale Diagnostics; NeuroRx Research; Neurotrack Technologies; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Pfizer; Piramal Imaging; Servier; Takeda Pharmaceutical Company; and Transition Therapeutics. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is providing funds to support ADNI clinical sites in Canada. Private sector contributions are facilitated by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (www.fnih.org). The grantee organization is the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, and the study is coordinated by the Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute at the University of Southern California. ADNI data are disseminated by the Laboratory for Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California

Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome in a Patient with Corticobasal Degeneration

Parkinson’s disease is a principal underlying disease of neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) occurring in parkinsonian disorders, but NMS may occur in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy. We report first patient with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) who developed NMS after abrupt reduction of antiparkinsonian medication and concurrent infection. It should be kept in mind that the prevention of infectious illness, which is common complication in parkinson-plus syndrome, is important, and dose reduction or withdrawal of anti-parkinsonian medications should be carefully performed even in the patients with CBD who are expected to be unresponsive to levodopa treatment

Paroxysmal freezing of gait in a patient with mesial frontal transient ischemic attacks

Abstract Background Rare patients have been reported who developed a mixture of gait disturbances following a focal lesion in the frontal lobe. Thus, the exact location of frontal lesion responsible for a specific gait disturbance is not well defined. Case presentation We describe a 47-year-old man who experienced two episodes of paroxysmal freezing of gait of the right leg. During the attacks, he had no motor weakness, sensory change, or disequilibrium. He had past history of panic attacks. Recently, he had been under severe emotional stress. T2 and diffusion brain magnetic resonance imaging scans were normal. So far, the most likely clinical diagnosis might be functional freezing of gait. However, magnetic resonance angiography showed atherosclerosis in the proximal left anterior cerebral artery. Perfusion scans showed a delayed mean transit time in the left mesial frontal lobe. He developed two more attacks during the four months of follow up. Conclusions The presented case illustrates that the mesial frontal lobe may be important in the pathophysiology of freezing of gait. We speculate that the supplementary motor area may generate a neuronal command for the initiation of locomotion that in our case may have been inhibited by a transient ischemia

Tau Positron Emission Tomography Imaging in Degenerative Parkinsonisms

In recent years, several radiotracers that selectively bind to pathological tau proteins have been developed. Evidence is emerging that binding patterns of in vivo tau positron emission tomography (PET) studies in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients closely resemble the distribution patterns of known neurofibrillary tangle pathology, with the extent of tracer binding reflecting the clinical and pathological progression of AD. In Lewy body diseases (LBD), tau PET imaging has clearly revealed cortical tau burden with a distribution pattern distinct from AD and increased cortical binding within the LBD spectrum. In progressive supranuclear palsy, the globus pallidus and midbrain have shown increased binding most prominently. Tau PET patterns in patients with corticobasal syndrome are characterized by asymmetrical uptake in the motor cortex and underlying white matter, as well as in the basal ganglia. Even in the patients with multiple system atrophy, which is basically a synucleinopathy, 18F-flortaucipir, a widely used tau PET tracer, also binds to the atrophic posterior putamen, possibly due to off-target binding. These distinct patterns of tau-selective radiotracer binding in the various degenerative parkinsonisms suggest its utility as a potential imaging biomarker for the differential diagnosis of parkinsonisms