Does
the brain ‘rust’
as it ages? Of course not, but it
accumulates iron and
some neurodegenerative diseases are
associated with abnormal iron overload, although we don't really know how or why.
The
QSM4SENIOR project, funded in 2022 by the European
EOSC-Life programme[1], aims
to better understand and quantify iron accumulation in brain tissue during normal ageing.
MRI is a tool that is
particularly sensitive to the presence of iron, especially as the machine's magnetic field intensity increases, notably through the acquisition method known as
Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) and the measurement of relaxivity R2* (inverse of relaxation time T2*).
On the one hand, QSM4SENIOR took advantage of the
data acquired with NeuroSpin's 7T MRI as part of the
SENIOR cohort, made up of volunteers aged over 50 who were followed up with one MRI acquisition session per year for ten years. The project also benefited from the expertise of the Marseille-based start-up
VENTIO in the
secure processing of health data.
Alexandre Vignaud, head of the METRIC laboratory within the
mixed research unit BAOBAB (UMR9027 CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay) coordinated the first study carried out as part of this project by Miguel Guevara, a CNRS postdoctoral researcher within METRIC. The
data collected is
unprecedented in terms of its spatial resolution and quality, and the number of volunteers included (77). They have enabled the teams to draw up
a precise mapping of changes in iron levels during normal ageing, particularly in the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, accumbens),
Analysis of these preliminary results seems to show that
age and sex have an influence on the accumulation of cerebral iron measured by QSM and R2* in a context of normal ageing, without the appearance of a pathological neurodegenerative process. Above all, it opens the door to a powerful tool for detecting early pathological deviations.
FUNDINGS
The QSM4SENIOR project has received European Horizon 2020 EOSC-Life funding (no. 824087).
Ventio is supported by Marseille Innovation, Initiative Marseille Métropole and Bpifrance.
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[1] EOSC-Life promotes an open, digital, secure and collaborative space for biological and medical research.