Gender Differences in Age-Related Striatal Dopamine Depletion in Parkinson's Disease

Another DATSCAN study, this time looking at gender differences in DAT binding, which have been shown plenty of times. The authors discuss the potential role of oestrogen...

J Mov Disord. 2015 Sep;8(3):130-5. doi: 10.14802/jmd.15031. Epub 2015 Sep 10.

Lee JJ, Ham JH, Lee PH, Sohn YH.

http://e-jmd.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.14802/jmd.15031

OBJECTIVE:

Gender differences are a well-known clinical characteristic of Parkinson's disease (PD). In-vivo imaging studies demonstrated that women have greater striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) activity than do men, both in the normal population and in PD patients. We hypothesize that women exhibit more rapid aging-related striatal DAT reduction than do men, as the potential neuroprotective effect of estrogen wanes with age.

METHODS:

This study included 307 de novo PD patients (152 men and 155 women) who underwent DAT scans for an initial diagnostic work-up. Gender differences in age-related DAT decline were assessed in striatal sub-regions using linear regression analysis.

RESULTS:

Female patients exhibited greater DAT activity compared with male patients in all striatal sub-regions. The linear regression analysis revealed that age-related DAT decline was greater in the anterior and posterior caudate, and the anterior putamen in women compared with men; we did not observe this difference in other sub-regions.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study demonstrated the presence of gender differences in age-related DAT decline in striatal sub-regions, particularly in the antero-dorsal striatum, in patients with PD, presumably due to aging-related decrease in estrogen. Because this difference was not observed in the sensorimotor striatum, this finding also suggests that women may not have a greater capacity to tolerate PD pathogenesis than do men.