Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurological disorder, but its diagnosis remains challenging. Cerebral glucose metabolism has emerged as a promising biomarker for PD based on previous studies. While these studies have established a PD-related pattern of metabolic activity of glucose in the brain, cerebral oxygen metabolism is less explored, and there is no well-established PD-related pattern of cerebral oxygen metabolism. This study investigates cerebral oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) as a measure of cerebral oxygen metabolism to monitor disease progression in early-stage PD. OEF was measured noninvasively using magnetic resonance imaging with the QSM + qBOLD technique in 50 PD patients and 30 healthy controls. Whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses were conducted, focusing on key regions within the basal ganglia. Results revealed significantly elevated OEF in the basal ganglia of PD patients compared to controls. Moreover, OEF showed a positive correlation with Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale Part III scores, indicating an association between increased oxygen extraction and motor impairment severity in early PD. These findings support the potential of cerebral OEF as an early biomarker of motor symptom severity. Therefore, it can enhance our understanding of metabolic dysfunction in the basal ganglia during the early stages of PD.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the Korea Dementia Research Project through the Korea Dementia Research Center (KDRC), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare and the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea (grant number: RS-2024-00334574). This work was partially supported by grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea of the Korean government (RS-2025-02216928).
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H.E.C. processed and conducted statistical analysis on the MRI data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. D.L. performed the registration of MR images. H.L. and J.L. were responsible for acquiring MRI data and UPDRS-III scores. J.C. implemented the QQ-CCTV code. H.C. conceptualized the study and interpreted the results. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
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This study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of the Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital (Yangsan, Republic of Korea).
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Candan, H.E., Lee, D., Lee, H. et al. Elevated cerebral oxygen extraction fraction in Parkinson’s disease correlates with motor impairment severity. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36435-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36435-z
