Is Hippocampal Volume a Relevant Early Marker of Dementia?

Mélissa Gentreau; Jerome J Maller; Chantal Meslin; Fabienne Cyprien; Jorge Lopez-Castroman; Sylvaine Artero

doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2023.05.015

Is Hippocampal Volume a Relevant Early Marker of Dementia?

Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2023 Nov;31(11):932-942. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2023.05.015. Epub 2023 Jun 15.

Authors

Mélissa Gentreau¹, Jerome J Maller², Chantal Meslin³, Fabienne Cyprien¹, Jorge Lopez-Castroman⁴, Sylvaine Artero⁵

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Functional Genomics (MG, FC, JLC, SA), University of Montpellier, CNRS, INSERM, Montpellier, France.
² Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre (JJM), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; General Electric Healthcare (JJM), Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
³ Centre for Mental Health Research (CM), Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
⁴ Institute of Functional Genomics (MG, FC, JLC, SA), University of Montpellier, CNRS, INSERM, Montpellier, France; Department of Adult Psychiatry (JLC), Nimes University Hospital, Nimes, France; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (JLC), Madrid, Spain.
⁵ Institute of Functional Genomics (MG, FC, JLC, SA), University of Montpellier, CNRS, INSERM, Montpellier, France. Electronic address: sylvaine.artero@inserm.fr.

PMID: 37394314
DOI: 10.1016/j.jagp.2023.05.015

Abstract

Objective: Hippocampal volume (HV) is a key imaging marker to improve Alzheimer's disease risk prediction. However, longitudinal studies are rare, and hippocampus may also be implicated in the subtle aging-related cognitive decline observed in dementia-free individuals. Our aim was to determine whether HV, measured by manual or automatic segmentation, is associated with dementia risk and cognitive decline in participants with and without incident dementia.

Methods: At baseline, 510 dementia-free participants from the French longitudinal ESPRIT cohort underwent magnetic resonance imaging. HV was measured by manual and by automatic segmentation (FreeSurfer 6.0). The presence of dementia and cognitive functions were investigated at each follow-up (2, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 15 years). Cox proportional hazards models and linear mixed models were used to assess the association of HV with dementia risk and with cognitive decline, respectively.

Results: During the 15-years follow-up, 42 participants developed dementia. Reduced HV (regardless of the measurement method) was significantly associated with higher dementia risk and cognitive decline in the whole sample. However, only the automatically measured HV was associated with cognitive decline in dementia-free participants.

Conclusion: These results suggest that HV can be used to predict the long-term risk of dementia but also cognitive decline in a dementia-free population. This raises the question of the relevance of HV measurement as an early marker of dementia in the general population.

Keywords: Hippocampus; MRI; automatic segmentation; cognition; dementia; manual segmentation.