The investigation of corpus callosum by magnetic resonance imaging in parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disease with both motor and sensory findings, characterized by the decrease or complete disappearance of dopamine release due to the degeneration of neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, followed by the globus pallidus, putamen and nucleus caudatus. Although studies on Parkinson's disease generally focus on structures belonging to the gray matter, studies on white matter, which is seen as the cause of sensory findings, which are known to appear much earlier than motor findings, have been increasing in recent years. The aim of this study is to investigate the changes in the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres and is the largest white matter structure in Parkinson's disease, by considering age and gender differences. Our study was carried out by comparing the length, width and angle values of the corpus callosum retrospectively on 120 midsagittal MR images of the control group without any diagnosis affecting the corpus callosum and 120 midsagittal MR images of the patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. According to the measurement results, the height of the corpus callosum, the distance between the anterior-end vertex and the distance between the anterior-internal-end and the vertex increased, the rostrum and genu width were decreased in the group with Parkinson's disease, and these changes were found to be statistically significant (p<0,05). When the corpus callosum length measurements were compared between genders, corpus callosum length (p=0.001), corpus callosum height (p=0.000), cerebrum length (p=0.000), distance between the anterior end of the corpus callosum and the vertex (p=0.001), between the mean distance between the anterior- inner tip and the vertex (p=0.002) It was observed that there was a significant difference and the mean of these parameters was higher in men than woman. While the corpus callosum length and width measurements tend to decrease with age in both the control group and the group diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, the decrease in the mean values of the corpus callosum width, genu width, splenium width and the width of the widest part of the truncus is also statistically significant (p<0,05). It was observed that this decrease became more pronounced in the group diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 81 years and above. The ratio of corpus callosum width to height was also significantly lower in the Parkinson's disease group (p=0,001). When the angular values were analyzed, it was found that the mean of angle 2, angle 4 and angle 5 values increased significantly in the group with Parkinson's disease (p<0,05).