White Matter Changes in Alzheimer’s Disease Revealed by Diffusion Tensor Imaging with TBSS

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder characterized by impairments in multiple cognitive domains and it is hard to diagnose in early stage because it’s not easy to recognize and develop slowly. In this study, we try to evaluate the difference of white matter between AD and health volunteers using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and try to provide some evidence for diagnose AD in early stage. Twelve elderly Chinese patients with AD and twelve healthy volunteers were recruited and underwent DTI. The raw diffusion data were dealt with the toolkit of FSL image post-processing. Fractional anisotrogy (FA) data were then carried out by using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). The result showed that the FA of cingulum, hippocampus, corticospinal tract, and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus significantly reduced in AD patients than that of volunteers. This indicated that the integrity of white matter tracts in these regions with AD was disturbed. On the other hand, the FA of other encephalic regions had no discrepancy compared with that of healthy volunteers. FA values were found reduced significantly in AD patients, especially in the posterior of the brain. These findings may provide image methods to diagnose patients with early stage of AD.

Relationship of Post-Stroke Aphasic Types with Sex, Age and Stroke Types

Aim: To explore what is the relationship of the types of post-stroke aphasia with sex, age and stroke types. Methods: Retrospective analysis was administrated on data of 421 patients with acute stroke. Western battery aphasia was used to measure aphasiac type and aphasia quotient (AQ) score. The patients were divided into three age groups: young, middle-aged and elderly. The stroke types were classified into cerebral infraction (CI) and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Results: All subjects were right-handed, which males and females accounted for 69.60% and 30.40%, respectively. There were 116 cases of Broca’s aphasia (85 males), 35 cases of Wernicke’s aphasia (20 males), 15 cases of conductive aphasia (10 males), 63 cases of transcortical motor aphasia (50 males), 11 cases of transcortical sensory aphasia (8 males), 27 cases of transcortical combined aphasia (13 males), 73 cases of anomic aphasia (47 males) and 81 cases of global aphasia (60 males). Male patients (69.60%) have a significantly higher morbidity of aphasia than that of females (30.40%) after stroke (χ2 = 11.57, P = 0.003), especially those under 65 years old (73.38%). For people 65 years and older, the morbidity of female (42.97%) tends to increase with age. Sex has no significant influence on the types of aphasia (χ2 = 13.84, P = 0.054). Broca’s aphasia is the most common type inboth male and female (29.01%, 24.22%, respectively). The distribution of aphasic types has no obvious difference among three age groups (χ2 = 14.94, P= 0.382). Aphasia induced by CI (306 cases) is more common than that by ICH (115 cases), but there was no difference in distribution of types of aphasia (χ2 = 13.23, P = 0.067). Conclusions: Male patients have a significantly higher level of morbidity of aphasia than females after stroke and a lower average age of onset than females. Broca’s aphasia is the most common one in both male and female. Broca’s aphasia, global and anomic aphasia are the most common aphasic types in both CI and ICH patients, except the female with ICH.