Volumes of the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices in Alzheimer's disease

We measured the volumes of the entorhinal, perirhinal, and temporopolar cortices on magnetic resonance images by using a recently designed histology-based protocol in 30 patients with early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 32 healthy control subjects. Compared to the controls, all of these cortical regions were significantly atrophied in AD patients (p < 0.0001). However, the entorhinal cortex was the most severely involved brain region studied. with 40% volume loss, and this region provided the highest discriminative accuracy (92%) in separating patients with AD from healthy control subjects. Importantly, the entorhinal volume loss was evident already in mild AD. In addition, the volume of the entorhinal cortex was not dependent on age, but it did correlate significantly with the severity of the disease. Because it assesses the major site of initial neuropathological changes in AD, magnetic resonance imaging volumetric measurement of the entorhinal cortex can offer a tool for distinguishing AD patients even in the very early stages of the disease from healthy aged subjects. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.