• LiQin Sheng, PanWen Zhao, HaiRong Ma, Joaquim Radua, ZhongQuan Yi, YuanYuan Shi, JianGuo Zhong, ZhenYu Dai, and PingLei Pan.
• Department of Neurology, Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Kunshan, PR China.
• Aging Us. 2021 Jan 10; 13 (3): 4007-4023.

AbstractParkinson's disease (PD) is a common age-related neurodegenerative disease that affects the structural architecture of the cerebral cortex. Cortical thickness (CTh) via surface-based morphometry (SBM) analysis is a popular measure to assess brain structural alterations in the gray matter in PD. However, the results of CTh analysis in PD lack consistency and have not been systematically reviewed. We conducted a comprehensive coordinate-based meta-analysis (CBMA) of 38 CTh studies (57 comparison datasets) in 1,843 patients with PD using the latest seed-based d mapping software. Compared with 1,172 healthy controls, no significantly consistent CTh alterations were found in patients with PD, suggesting CTh as an unreliable neuroimaging marker for PD. The lack of consistent CTh alterations in PD could be ascribed to the heterogeneity in clinical populations, variations in imaging methods, and underpowered small sample sizes. These results highlight the need to control for potential confounding factors to produce robust and reproducible CTh results in PD.

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