Associations of striatal dopamine transporter binding with motor and non‐motor symptoms in early Parkinson's disease

Dopamine transporter (DAT) imaging is an in vivo tool to assess presynaptic dopaminergic function in the clinical practices of Parkinson's disease (PD). Current clinical practices focused on qualitatively visual interpretation of DAT imaging, whereas quantitative analyses are potentially more helpful when monitoring the progression of PD. Previous cross‐sectional studies indicated certain motor and non‐motor features were associated with striatal DAT binding, whereas limited data were reported in terms of the longitudinal correlation between clinical features of PD with striatal DAT binding. The purpose of our study is to clarify current and longitudinal correlations between striatal DAT binding and clinical measures. A total of 352 untreated PD individuals and 167 healthy controls with complete baseline clinical measures and neuroimaging data were identified from the Parkinson's Progression and Markers Initiative (PPMI) database. Patients with PD underwent DAT imaging at the screening visit and following months 12, 24, and 48. Multiple linear regression models and linear mixed‐effect models were respectively conducted to investigate the cross‐sectional and longitudinal correlation between clinical characteristics and DAT binding. Associations between changes in clinical characteristics and changes in DAT binding were further evaluated and the Spearman rank correlation coefficients were reported. In the cross‐sectional analysis, baseline striatal DAT binding was significantly associated with the Hoehn and Yahr scale, the Movement Disorder Society‐Sponsored Revision of the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (MDS‐UPDRS) scores, the rigidity scores, and the axial scores in PD individuals (false discovery rate [FDR]‐adjusted p = 0.0017 for all above). Patients who developed freezing of gait had lower striatal DAT binding (FDR‐adjusted p = 0.0161). Healthy controls who had higher tremor scores and suffered more severe olfactory dysfunction had lower striatal DAT binding (FDR‐adjusted p = 0.0257 for all above). Longitudinal analysis indicated that baseline severity of rapid‐eye‐movement sleep behavior disorder was significantly associated with longitudinal striatal DAT binding in patients with PD (FDR‐adjusted p = 0.0120). Furthermore, changes in MDS‐UPDRS scores and the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) scores demonstrated significant correlations with changes in striatal DAT binding over 4 years (p = 0.005 and p = 0.032, respectively). Our findings clarified quantitative associations between certain motor and non‐motor features with current and future striatal dopamine binding, suggesting the feasibility of using DAT images as a progression predictive marker for PD. Further studies are needed to investigate correlations between different regional dopamine binding with specific clinical features.