Monoamine transporter availability in Parkinson’s disease patients with or without depression

Purpose Depression is a common symptom in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease (PD) and markedly reduces their quality of life. As post-mortem studies have shown, its presence may reflect extensive cell loss in the midbrain and brainstem with imbalances in monoaminergic neurotransmitters. However, in vivo evidence of specific monoaminergic deficits in depressed PD patients is still sparse. Therefore, we studied PD patients with depression (PD+D) and without depression (PD−D) using high-resolution single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and the monoamine transporter marker [ 123 I]FP-CIT. Methods A magnetic resonance imaging-based region-of-interest analysis was applied to quantify the specific-to-nondisplaceable [ 123 I]FP-CIT binding coefficient V 3 ″ in the striatum, thalamus and midbrain/brainstem regions. Results PD+D patients had significantly lower V 3 ″ compared with PD−D patients in the striatum ( p