Background: Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) seems to be involved in the neural circuits associated with social cognition and brain structure.
Objectives: To investigate the association of IGF-1 levels with social cognition and brain structure in Huntington's disease (HD).
Methods: We evaluated social cognition using the Ekman test in 22 HD patients and 19 matched controls. Brain structure was assessed using standard volume-based voxel-based morphometry and surface-based cortical thickness pipeline. We analyzed the association of IGF-1 levels with social cognition and brain structure using adjusted regression analysis.
Results: Social cognition was worse in HD patients (P < 0.001), on antidopaminergic drugs (P = 0.02), and with lower IGF-1 levels (P = 0.04). In neuroimaging analyses, lower IGF-1 levels were associated with social cognition impairment and atrophy mainly in frontotemporal regions (P < 0.05 corrected).
Conclusions: In HD, abnormal IGF-1 function seems to be associated with brain atrophy leading to clinical deficits in social cognition.
Keywords: Huntington's disease; IGF‐1; chorea; hypothalamus; neuroimaging; social cognition.
© 2022 The Authors. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.