Choi MH, et al. - This follow-up study was performed to examine whether cardiac iodine-123-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) uptake was associated with a later risk of dementia. The authors revealed that the reduction in cardiac MIBG uptake by Parkinson's disease (PD) patients could be correlated with a subsequent risk of dementia. In PD, reduced uptake could reflect a wider extension of alpha-synuclein pathology.

• A total of 93 drug-naive patients with de novo PD who underwent MIBG scanning on initial evaluation were retrospectively enrolled.
• For this study, the patients visited their outpatient clinic every 3-6 months and were followed-up for a minimum of 4 years from the time they were begun on dopaminergic medication.
• Using Cox's proportional hazard models, the predictive powers of baseline MIBG cardiac scintigraphic data in terms of dementia development were assessed.

• In this study, 27 patients with PD (29.0%) developed dementia during a mean follow-up period of 6.7 years.
• Compared to others patients, these patients had less baseline MIBG uptake (delayed H/M ratios: 1.19 vs. 1.31).
• Multivariate Cox's proportional hazard modeling demonstrated that both MIBG uptake (hazard ratio [HR] 3.40; p = 0.004) and age (HR 1.08, p = 0.01) significantly predicted dementia development.