Asian-specific leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene risk variants are associated with increased risk of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) and accelerated motor progression in disease. We examined the role of quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NMS) in quantifying dopaminergic denervation in the substantia nigra (SN) in LRRK2 risk-carriers and non-carriers in PD. QSM susceptibility and high-iron area in the SN were significantly increased in PD risk-carriers compared to non-carriers; NMS showed no difference between these two groups. Combined quantitative QSM models displayed good classification performance discriminating risk-carrier from non-carrier groups (68.4% sensitivity, 92.3% specificity, AUC 0.804) in PD.
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