Department of Radiology, Drum Tower Hospital, the Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China.
Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Drum Tower Hospital, the Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China.
Lupus. 2021 Jun;30(7):1078-1085. doi: 10.1177/09612033211005556. Epub 2021 Apr 15.
To investigate the changes of olfactory function and odor-induced brain activation in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) at early stages compared with healthy controls.
Olfactory function and odor-induced brain activation in 12 SLE patients at early stages and 12 age, gender and education matched healthy controls were evaluated using olfactory behavior test and odor-induced task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (task-fMRI).
No significant differences in olfactory behavior scores (including olfactory threshold, olfactory identification, and olfactory memory) were found in the patients with SLE at early stages compared with the healthy controls, while significantly decreased odor-induced activations in olfactory-related brain regions were observed in the patients. In the SLE group, the patients with better performance in the olfactory threshold test had significantly lower levels of anti-dsDNA antibody.
The current study demonstrated that significant alterations in odor-induced brain activations occurred prior to measurable olfactory decline in SLE at early stages, which provided a new method for early diagnosis of olfactory dysfunction in SLE.
探讨系统性红斑狼疮（SLE）早期患者嗅觉功能和气味诱导脑激活的变化，并与健康对照者进行比较。
采用嗅觉行为测试和气味诱导任务功能磁共振成像（task-fMRI）评估 12 例早期 SLE 患者和 12 例年龄、性别和教育程度匹配的健康对照者的嗅觉功能和气味诱导脑激活情况。
与健康对照组相比，早期 SLE 患者的嗅觉行为评分（包括嗅觉阈值、嗅觉识别和嗅觉记忆）无显著差异，而嗅觉相关脑区的气味诱导激活明显降低。在 SLE 组中，嗅觉阈值测试表现较好的患者抗 dsDNA 抗体水平显著降低。
本研究表明，在早期 SLE 出现可测量的嗅觉下降之前，气味诱导的脑激活已经发生显著改变，为 SLE 患者嗅觉功能障碍的早期诊断提供了一种新方法。
