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Treatment of primary progressive aphasia by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

  • Neurology and Preclinical Neurological Studies - Original Article
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Abstract

To evaluate the efficacy of high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). In this randomized, double-blind trial in a single center, patients who were diagnosed with PPA were randomly assigned to receive either real rTMS or sham rTMS treatment. High-frequency rTMS was delivered to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The primary outcome was the change in Boston Naming Test (BNT) score at each follow-up compared to the baseline. The secondary outcomes included change in CAL (Communicative Activity Log) and WAB (Western Aphasia Battery) compared to baseline and neuropsychological assessments. Forty patients (16 with nonfluent, 12 with semantic and 12 with logopenic variant PPA) were enrolled and randomly assigned to the rTMS or sham rTMS group, with 20 patients in each group. Thirty-five patients (87.5%) completed a 6-month follow-up. Compared to the sham rTMS group, the BNT improvement and WAB improvement in the real rTMS group were significantly higher. These significant improvements could be observed throughout the entire 6-month follow-up. At 1 month and 3 months after treatment, CAL improvements of real rTMS were significantly higher than sham rTMS. The improvements in BNT, CAL and WAB did not significantly differ among PPA variants. No significant improvement in neuropsychological assessments was observed. High-frequency rTMS delivered to DLPFC improved language functions in patients with different PPA variants. The efficacy was still observed after 6 months of treatment. Trial registration: NCT04431401 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04431401).

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Non-profit Central Research Institute Fund of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (2019XK320039) and National High-Level Hospital Clinical Research Funding (2022-PUMCH-B-017).

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Correspondence to Yuzhou Guan.

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The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Clinical Research of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (Beijing, China). The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Written informed consent was obtained from every participant.

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Huang, Y., Tan, Y., Hao, H. et al. Treatment of primary progressive aphasia by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. J Neural Transm 130, 111–123 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-023-02594-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-023-02594-w

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