Mishra Sapna S, Gandhi Tapan Kumar, Biswal Bharat
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA.
Neuroimage Rep. 2025 Mar 22;5(2):100253. doi: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2025.100253. eCollection 2025 Jun.
The underlying mechanisms of long-term sequelae of the COVID-19 infection, including fatigue, memory issues, and attention deficit, remain to be understood. Therefore, we investigated the Diffusion MRI scans of 73 COVID-Recovered Patients (CRPs) and 46 Healthy Controls (HCs) using Fixel-based analysis to study the sub-voxel microstructural properties of nervous tissue. We compared the Fiber Density (FD), log scaled Fiber Cross-section (log-FC), and a combined fiber density and cross-section measure (FDC) across the cohorts. Our study reveals significant alterations (pFWE <0.01) in the uncinate fasciculus (FD, log-FC, FDC; CRP > HC), perigenual corpus callosum (FD; CRP > HC), fornix (log-FC, FDC; CRP > HC), right arcuate fasciculus (FD; CRP < HC), as well as bilateral clusters in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (FD; CRP < HC), and the corticospinal tract (FD; CRP < HC). We suggest that these changes may be related to microscopic changes in axonal volume. Notably, the tracts identified in this study highlight the involvement of the limbic system and the visuospatial attention network in the disorder. We expect our findings to improve our understanding of the neurological underpinnings of COVID-19.
新冠病毒感染长期后遗症的潜在机制，包括疲劳、记忆问题和注意力缺陷，仍有待进一步了解。因此，我们使用基于体素的分析方法，对73名新冠康复患者（CRP）和46名健康对照者（HC）的扩散磁共振成像扫描进行了研究，以探讨神经组织的亚体素微观结构特性。我们比较了不同队列之间的纤维密度（FD）、对数标度纤维横截面积（log-FC）以及纤维密度与横截面积的综合测量值（FDC）。我们的研究揭示了钩束（FD、log-FC、FDC；CRP > HC）、膝周胼胝体（FD；CRP > HC）、穹窿（log-FC、FDC；CRP > HC）、右侧弓状束（FD；CRP < HC）以及双侧下纵束（FD；CRP < HC）和皮质脊髓束（FD；CRP < HC）中的显著变化（pFWE <0.01）。我们认为这些变化可能与轴突体积的微观变化有关。值得注意的是，本研究中确定的神经束突出了边缘系统和视觉空间注意力网络在该疾病中的参与。我们期望我们的研究结果能增进我们对新冠病毒感染神经学基础的理解。
