Morphometric evaluation of corpus callosum by using magnetic resonance imaging in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disease involving a combination of upper and lower motor neuron damage. Despite research, current management of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis remains inadequate in terms of diagnosis and prognosis. The difficulty in recognizing the disease, especially in the early stages, is due to reasons such as heterogeneous phenotype and overlapping of symptoms with other diseases. More common diseases are usually considered before amyotrophic lateral sclerosis disease, which delays the diagnosis. In our study, it was aimed to obtain a finding that would help the diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by examining the corpus callosum. For this study, 60 images previously obtained by magnetic resonance imaging were used. In the midsagittal plane, the corpus callosum length, thickness and angle of the downward-facing opening were measured. In addition, the corpus callosum was divided into five regions and area measurements were made. In these morphometric measurements made on the corpus callosum, it was investigated whether there were differences between patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and healthy individuals. In addition, extremity and bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis types were compared. There were 17 extremity-onset and 13 bulbar-onset patients in the patient group. According to the findings obtained from this study, there was a statistically significant difference between the patient and control groups in terms of corpus callosum thickness, area of five regions and total area of corpus callosum. The thickness and area measurement values of the corpus calosum were found to be lower in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients compared to the control group. A statistically significant difference was found between the patients with limb-onset and bulbar-onset only in terms of callosal angle measurement. The callosal angle is narrower in bulbar-onset patients compared to limb-onset patients. In conclusion, this study showed morphological changes in the corpus callosum between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and healthy individuals, and between extremity onset and bulbar onset. These data may contribute to the diagnosis of the disease, to a future classification of the disease, or to scientific studies on the disease.