Cross-sectional analysis reveals higher extrastriatal binding in the prefrontal cortex in PD patients with REM sleep behavior disorder, suggesting altered serotonin pathways.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a frequent non-motor symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD) and a potential early marker of synucleinopathy-related neurodegeneration. While striatal dopaminergic dysfunction in PD-RBD has been extensively studied, the role of extrastriatal monoaminergic alterations -particularly those involving serotonin - remains poorly understood. In this study, 155 PD patients underwent [123I]FP-CIT SPECT imaging to assess striatal and extrastriatal tracer binding, reflecting dopaminergic and broader monoaminergic function, respectively. Probable RBD was identified using a validated single-question screening tool with high sensitivity and specificity. Patients with probable RBD (RBD + , n = 44) were compared to those without (RBD - , n = 111) using voxel-wise and region-of-interest analyses, controlling for age, sex, disease duration, motor and non-motor symptom severity, and cognitive function. No significant differences were observed in striatal dopamine transporter binding. However, RBD+ patients showed significantly higher extrastriatal binding in the prefrontal cortex (pFWE < 0.05), suggesting a potential role for altered extrastriatal monoaminergic neurotransmission, possibly involving serotonergic pathways, in PD-RBD pathophysiology. These findings should be interpreted with caution due to the non-selective binding profile of the radiotracer.
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Jaakkola et al. (2025) studied this question.
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