Ma Xiaofen, Tian Junzhang, Wu Zhanhong, Zong Xiaopeng, Dong Jianwei, Zhan Wenfeng, Xu Yikai, Li Zibo, Jiang Guihua
Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong Provincial No.2 People's Hospital, Guangzhou City, Guangdong province, PR China.
Biomedical Research Imaging Center and Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Aug 25;11(8):e0161392. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161392. eCollection 2016.
To investigate the aberrant functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and their clinical relevance.
Resting-state functional MRI data were collected from 31 patients with ESRD (24 men, 24-61 years) and 31 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs, 21 men, 26-61years). A whole-brain seed-based functional connectivity analysis of these collected R-fMRI data was performed by locating the seeds in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to investigate the functional connectivity of the posterior and anterior DMN over the whole brain, respectively.
Compared to the HCs, the patients exhibited significantly decreased functional connectivity with the PCC in the left middle temporal gyrus, the right anterior cingulate gyrus, and the bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus. For the vmPFC seed, only the right thalamus showed significantly decreased functional connectivity in the patients with ESRD compared to HCs. Interestingly, functional connectivity between the PCC and right medial superior frontal gyrus exhibited a significantly positive correlation with the hemoglobin level in the patients.
Our findings suggest a spatially specific disruption of functional connectivity in the DMN in patients with ESRD, thereby providing novel insights into our understanding of the neurophysiology mechanism that underlies the disease.
探讨终末期肾病（ESRD）患者默认模式网络（DMN）的异常功能连接及其临床相关性。
收集31例ESRD患者（24例男性，年龄24 - 61岁）和31例年龄及性别匹配的健康对照者（HCs，21例男性，年龄26 - 61岁）的静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。通过将种子点分别定位在后扣带回皮质（PCC）和腹内侧前额叶皮质（vmPFC），对这些收集到的静息态fMRI数据进行全脑基于种子点的功能连接分析，以分别研究后扣带回和前扣带回在全脑的功能连接。
与健康对照者相比，患者在左侧颞中回、右侧前扣带回和双侧额上回内侧与PCC的功能连接显著降低。对于vmPFC种子点，与健康对照者相比，仅右侧丘脑在ESRD患者中显示出显著降低的功能连接。有趣的是，PCC与右侧额上回内侧之间的功能连接与患者的血红蛋白水平呈显著正相关。
我们的研究结果表明ESRD患者DMN的功能连接在空间上存在特定的破坏，从而为我们理解该疾病潜在的神经生理机制提供了新的见解。
