Correlação entre medidas quantitativas de espessura retiniana, concentração de metabólitos encefálicos e funções neuropsicológicas de pacientes com transtornos neurocognitivos

Abstract

Currently, with the increase in life expectancy of human populations, neurodegenerative diseases, commonly occurring with the advancing age, have become a source of serious concern. Thus, research into new ways of early diagnosis of neurocognitive disorders associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, as well as the improvement of the understanding of currently available clinical neurological diagnostic methods, has been promoted throughout the world. In this sense, this work proposes to investigate the existence of possible correlations between the results of exams used in clinical neurological investigation of patients diagnosed with neurocognitive disorder associated with these important neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases). The results show that the measurement of the thickness of the nerve fiber layer of the perimacular retina, performed by optical coherence tomography, is a parameter that may not differ significantly between groups of patients and healthy subjects. On the other hand, the measurement of the amplitude of the spectroscopic signals generated by encephalic metabolites, performed by magnetic resonance proton spectroscopy, reveals encephalic changes that vary from region to region. In addition, the neuropsychological measure of cognitive functions, performed by the automated CANTAB battery, reveals that several aspects of these functions are impaired in these patients. Finally, Principal Component Analysis shows that, considering the set of variables obtained by tomographic and neuropsychological measurements, it is possible to observe a correlation between several of these variables. Thus, it is concluded that correlating the results obtained by different approaches may add potential in the interpretation of this casuistry, which would not be possible if we consider such data in an isolated way.