Baseline and Longitudinal Changes in Lateral Ventricle Volume Predict Cognitive Decline

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AbstractBackgroundThe use of biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer disease (AD) is crucial for developing potential treatments. Previous research has linked structural alterations in specific brain regions to cognitive decline. Lateral ventricle volume can be estimated reliably from various modalities of brain imaging, but this has not been well studied as an AD biomarker. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that baseline and longitudinal changes in lateral ventricle volume as measured by MRI could predict changes in global cognitive composite scores.Method363 Participants enrolled in longitudinal studies at the Knight ADRC at Washington University in St. Louis were included. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data was obtained through OASIS (www.oasis‐brains.org). Participants were required to have at least two cognitive assessments and MRI scans. Lateral ventricular volumes were extracted and corrected for head size using the FreeSurfer intracranial volume. A global cognitive composite score was calculated from the average z‐scores of 10 neuropsychological tests. A random coefficient model was used to calculate longitudinal change in lateral ventricular volumes, and to assess whether these measures predicted cognitive decline when adjusted for age, sex, APOE Ɛ4, and years of education. Spearman correlation was also used to evaluate the relationship between cognitive decline and baseline or longitudinal changes in lateral ventricle volumes.ResultWe found that baseline and longitudinal changes in lateral ventricle volume predicted the rate of change in global cognitive composite (Table 1 and 2, t = ‐4.82, p<0.0001 and t = ‐3.83, p = 0.0001). Additionally, there were significant correlations between baseline and longitudinal changes in lateral ventricle volume and the rate of change in global cognitive composite (Figure 1, R2 = 0.0657, p<0.0001; and R2 = 0.0412, p<0.0001).ConclusionBaseline and longitudinal changes in lateral ventricle volume predicted decline on a global cognitive composite. MRI scanners are widely available world‐wide. Baseline and longitudinal lateral ventricle volumes could potentially be used to stratify risk for cognitive decline for clinical trials.