Recently, reliable and clear evidence for the usefulness of 123I-MIBG scintigraphy in the diagnosis of
Parkinson's disease (PD) has been accumulated and it has become increasingly popular as one of the most accurate means of diagnosing the disease. PD, one of the most common
neurodegenerative disorders, is characterized by
resting tremor, rigidity,
bradykinesia or akinesia, and postural instability. The disease is characterized pathologically by distinctive neuronal inclusions called Lewy bodies in many surviving cells of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta and other specific brain regions. Furthermore Lewy body type degeneration in the cardiac plexus has been observed in PD. In PD, cardiac
MIBG uptake is reduced markedly even in the early disease stages; therefore,
MIBG imaging can be used as an
indicator of the presence of PD rather than disease severity. Other
parkinsonian syndromes such as
multiple system atrophy,
progressive supranuclear palsy, and
corticobasal degeneration demonstrate normal cardiac
MIBG uptake or only mild reduction of
MIBG uptake, indicating that
MIBG imaging is a powerful method to differentiate PD from other
parkinsonian syndromes.
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) also shows severe reduction of
MIBG uptake, whereas
Alzheimer's disease (AD) demonstrates normal
MIBG uptake, permitting differentiation of DLB from AD using
MIBG scintigraphy. In
pure autonomic failure, which shares similar pathological findings with PD and is thought to be associated with diffuse loss of sympathetic terminal innervation, cardiac
MIBG uptake also decreases markedly. Considering all the data together, marked reduction of cardiac
MIBG uptake seems to be a specific marker of
Lewy body disease and thus extremely useful in the differentiation from other diseases with similar symptoms without Lewy bodies.