Probable REM sleep behavior disorder is associated with longitudinal cortical thinning in Parkinson’s disease

REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) has a poor prognostic implication in both motor and non-motor functions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. However, to the best of our knowledge no study to date investigated the longitudinal cerebral changes underlying RBD symptoms in PD. We performed the longitudinal study to investigate the association between probable RBD and cortical and subcortical changes in early, de novo PD patients. We studied 78 participants from the Parkinson’s Progression Marker Initiative who underwent structural MRI at baseline and after 2 years. The presence of probable RBD (pRBD) was evaluated using the RBD screening questionnaire. We compared the cross-sectional and longitudinal cortical thickness and subcortical volume changes, between PD patients with and without pRBD. At baseline, we found bilateral inferior temporal cortex thinning in the PD-pRBD group compared with the PD-noRBD group. Longitudinally, the PD-pRBD group revealed a significant increase in the rate of thinning in the left insula compared with the PD-noRBD group, and the increased thinning correlated with decreased cognitive performance. In subcortical volume analyses, the presence of pRBD was linked with volume decrease over time in the left caudate nucleus, pallidum and amygdala. The volume changes in the left caudate nucleus revealed correlations with global cognition. These results support the idea that RBD is an important marker of rapid progression in PD motor and non-motor symptoms and suggest that the atrophy in the left insula and caudate nucleus might be the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the poorer prognosis in PD patients with RBD.