PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - A. Quattrone
AU  - A. Cerasa
AU  - D. Messina
AU  - G. Nicoletti
AU  - G.E. Hagberg
AU  - L. Lemieux
AU  - F. Novellino
AU  - P. Lanza
AU  - G. Arabia
AU  - M. Salsone
TI  - Essential Head Tremor Is Associated with Cerebellar Vermis Atrophy: A Volumetric and Voxel-Based Morphometry MR Imaging Study
AID  - 10.3174/ajnr.A1190
DP  - 2008 Oct 01
TA  - American Journal of Neuroradiology
PG  - 1692--1697
VI  - 29
IP  - 9
4099  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/29/9/1692.short
4100  - http://www.ajnr.org/content/29/9/1692.full
SO  - Am. J. Neuroradiol.2008 Oct 01; 29
AB  - BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Our aim was to investigate the presence of brain gray matter (GM) abnormalities in patients with different forms of essential tremor (ET).MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and manually traced single region-of-interest analysis in 50 patients with familial ET and in 32 healthy subjects. Thirty patients with ET had tremor of the arms (a-ET), whereas the remaining 20 patients had both arm and head tremor (h-ET).RESULTS: VBM showed marked atrophy of the cerebellar vermis in the patients with h-ET with respect to healthy subjects (Pcorrected < .001). Patients with a-ET showed a trend toward a vermal GM volume loss that did not reach a significant difference with respect to healthy controls (Puncorrected < .01). The region-of-interest analysis showed a reduction of the cerebellar volume (CV) in the h-ET group (98.2 ± 13.6 mm3) compared with healthy controls (110.5 ± 15.5 mm3, P < .012) as well as in the entire vermal area (790.3 ± 94.5 mm2, 898.6 ± 170.6 mm2, P < .04 in h-ET and control groups, respectively).CONCLUSIONS: Atrophy of the cerebellar vermis detected in patients with h-ET strongly supports the evidence for the involvement of the cerebellum in the pathophysiology of ET. The lack of a significant CV loss observed in patients with a-ET suggests that a-ET and h-ET might represent distinct subtypes of the same disease.