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Abstract #4272

Cerebral White Matter Disruption in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

Hedok Lee1, Chen Hoffmann2, Oren S. Cohen3, Peter B. Kingsley4, Isak Prohovnik1,5

1Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, United States; 2Radiology, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel; 3Neurology, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel; 4Radiology, North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY, United States; 5Radiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, United States


To test the sensitivity of DTI to detect white matter integrity in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), we scanned 21 CJD patients and 19 healthy controls, computed fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity (RD), and axial diffusivity, and quantitatively compared the results in voxel-level analyses of tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). In CJD patients, significant FA reductions in distinct and functionally relevant white matter (WM) pathways correlated with disease duration and reflected an elevation of RD, suggesting augmented permeability of axonal membranes. Our findings demonstrate involvement of WM pathways connecting structural landmarks that are known to be involved in the disease.