Predicting the efficacy of donepezil intervention in Alzheimer’s disease patients using regional homogeneity in the inferior orbitofrontal cortex

Abstract

Abstract Background Although donepezil is a commonly used drug for treating Alzheimer's disease (AD), the mechanisms by which it affects patients’ functional brain activity, and thus modulates clinical symptoms, remain unclear. Methods In the present study, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) to investigate the effects of donepezil on local brain activity in AD patients. Resting-state functional MRI data were collected from 32 subjects: 16 healthy controls and 16 AD patients. All 16 AD patients underwent 6 months of donepezil treatment and received two MRI scans (pre- and post-intervention). Analysis of covariance and post hoc analyses were used to compare ReHo differences among the healthy controls, pre-intervention AD patients, and post-intervention AD patients. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine relationships between ReHo values in differential brain regions and clinical symptoms. Results Compared with healthy controls, post-intervention AD patients had reduced ReHo in the orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus, and pre-intervention AD patients had reduced ReHo in the orbital part of the right inferior frontal gyrus. Pattern recognition models revealed that pre-intervention ReHo values in abnormal brain regions of AD patients were 76% accurate for predicting the efficacy of donepezil on cognitive function and 65% accurate for predicting its efficacy on depressive symptoms. Conclusions These findings deepen our understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying the clinical efficacy of donepezil in AD patients, and provide a novel way to predict its clinical efficacy in such patients.