Objective: To test whether post-operative local field potential recordings in STN could predict the long-term therapeutic efficacy in patients with PD who underwent bilateral STN DBS.

Background: STN DBS is a well established therapy for advanced PD. Predicting factors for favorable outcome including responsiveness to levodopa and baseline motor impairment before operation. Beta oscillatory activity (13–35 Hz) in the STN has been linked to akinetic–rigid symptoms in PD. However, whether the features of Beta activities recorded post-operatively could predict long-term therapeutic efficacy has yet been established. Here, we correlate the beta activity features by using a newly established ConceFT method, and the improvement of motor symptoms in PD at about 1 year after operation.

Method: 25 patients with advanced PD (7 females; age 60.4 ± 7.8 y/o; disease duration 15.2 ± 5.7 years) who underwent bilateral implantation of DBS electrodes in the STN were included in this study. Resting state local field potentials (LFPs) were obtained from 49 sides (25 right and 24 left STNs) at 3~5 days after operation. Clinical UPDRS III ON/OFF stimulation was assessed postoperatively between 6 to 18 months. Bipolar LFPs were analyzed. Powers in different frequency bands (alpha, beta, low beta, and high beta) were calculated with both traditional power spectrum and with the new “ConceFT” method [1]. All powers were normalized by the total power of 5–55 and 65–95 Hz frequency bands.

Results: Positive correlation was revealed between improvement in UPDRS‐III hemibody bradykinesia/rigidity scores, and contralateral high beta band (20–35 Hz) power (per ConceFT), most significantly at the uppermost contact pair (ρ = 0.52, P <.001). Bradykinesia or rigidity alone also gave positive correlations (ρ = 0.38, P =.007, and ρ = 0.40, P =.006, respectively). On the other hand, low beta band (13–20 Hz) power had weak positive correlation with bradykinesia (ρ = 0.30, P =.038). In broad beta band (13–35 Hz), there was positive correlation for bradykinesia/rigidity or bradykinesia alone (ρ = 0.43, P =.002, and ρ = 0.43, P =.002) but not for rigidity alone (ρ = 0.03, P =.864).

Conclusion: Our preliminary result shows that high beta activity in post-operative LFP has good predictive value of long-term stimulation efficacy in terms of bradykinesia/rigidity.

References: [1] Daubechies I, Wang Y(G), Wu H-T. 2016 ConceFT: concentration of frequency and time via a multitapered synchrosqueezed transform. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 374: 20150193.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/can-post-operative-local-field-potentials-in-the-stn-predict-long-term-dbs-efficacy-in-parkinsons-disease/