Imaging of glia activation in people with primary lateral sclerosis

Background Glia activation is thought to contribute to neuronal damage in several neurodegenerative diseases based on preclinical and human post-mortem studies, but its role in primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) is unknown. Objectives To localize and measure glia activation in people with PLS compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods Ten participants with PLS and ten age-matched HCs underwent simultaneous magnetic resonance (MR) and proton emission tomography (PET). The radiotracer [11C]-PBR28 was used to obtain PET-based measures of 18 kDa translocator protein (TSPO) expression, a marker of activated glial cells. MR techniques included a structural sequence to measure cortical thickness and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to assess white matter integrity. Results PET data showed increased [11C]-PBR28 uptake in anatomically-relevant motor regions which co-localized with areas of regional gray matter atrophy and decreased subcortical fractional anisotropy. Conclusions This study supports a link between glia activation and neuronal degeneration in PLS, and suggests that these disease mechanisms can be measured in vivo in PLS. Future studies are needed to determine the longitudinal changes of these imaging measures and to clarify if MR-PET with [11C]-PBR28 can be used as a biomarker for drug development in the context of clinical trials for PLS.