Reader Comments

Post a new comment on this article

What is the smallest proportional degree (percentage) of shrinkage that your method would have detected?

Posted by scwarren on 05 Oct 2013 at 18:30 GMT

When I was diagnosed with PD in 2011 my consultant told me that 80% of the [dopaminergic] neurons in my substantia nigra had died. As a biochemist I doubted this, although it was repeated in most of the layman's information, and I could find no evidence published that supported this statement. The failure to detect any shrinkage in any the regions of the brains of 23 symptomatic PD patients is therefore encouraging but how sensitive is the method used to detect shrinkage? In particular is it possible to put a maximum figure on shrinkage of the substantia nigra?

No competing interests declared.