123I-FP-CIT SPECT Imaging of Dopamine Transporters in Patients with Cerebrovascular Disease and Clinical Diagnosis of Vascular

The purpose of our study was to prospectively evaluate the striatal uptake of 123I-labeled N-(3-fluoropropyl)-2-carbome-thoxy-3-(4-iodophenyl)nortropane (FP-CIT) and the response to L-dopa therapy in patients with cerebrovascular disease (CVD) who develop clinical symptoms of vascular parkinsonism (VP). Methods: Twenty consecutive patients who developed VP in the course of CVD were prospectively enrolled in the study. All patients had CT evidence of CVD (17 patients had lacunar infarcts, 3 patients had territorial strokes). The clinical stage of the patients was assessed using the Hoehn and Yahr scale, and the severity of the symptoms was measured using the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale score. Ten age-matched sub-jects were used as controls. SPECT was performed 180 min after injection of 185 MBq 123I-FP-CIT using a dual-head -cam-era. The ratio of the mean specific-to-nonspecific striatal bind