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. 2021 Apr 6;7(4):e06709.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06709. eCollection 2021 Apr.

Myelin water fraction decrease in individuals with chronic mild traumatic brain injury and persistent symptoms

Bretta Russell-Schulz  1 , Irene M Vavasour  1 , Jing Zhang  2 , Alex L MacKay  1   3 , Victoria Purcell  4 , Angela M Muller  5 , Leyla R Brucar  5 , Ivan J Torres  4   6 , William J Panenka  2   4 , Naznin Virji-Babul  5   7
Affiliations

Myelin water fraction decrease in individuals with chronic mild traumatic brain injury and persistent symptoms

Bretta Russell-Schulz et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

The diffuse and continually evolving secondary changes after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) make it challenging to assess alterations in brain-behaviour relationships. In this study we used myelin water imaging to evaluate changes in myelin water fraction (MWF) in individuals with chronic mTBI and persistent symptoms and measured their cognitive status using the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery. Fifteen adults with mTBI with persistent symptoms and twelve age, gender and education matched healthy controls took part in this study. We found a significant decrease in global white matter MWF in patients compared to the healthy controls. Significantly lower MWF was evident in most white matter region of interest (ROIs) examined including the corpus callosum (separated into genu, body and splenium), minor forceps, right anterior thalamic radiation, left inferior longitudinal fasciculus; and right and left superior longitudinal fasciculus and corticospinal tract. Although patients showed lower cognitive functioning, no significant correlations were found between MWF and cognitive measures. These results suggest that individuals with chronic mTBI who have persistent symptoms have reduced MWF.

Keywords: Chronic injury; Cognition; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mild traumatic brain injury; Myelin water fraction.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Myelin water fraction (MWF) maps for all participants; A) mild traumatic brain injury and B) controls with age and sex demographics.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Myelin water fraction (MWF) for all controls and mild TBI subjects; in all regions of interest; A) genu of corpus callosum (GCC), body of corpus callosum (BCC), splenium of corpus callosum (SCC), minor forceps (MN), global white matter (GWM), B) left and right anterior thalamic radiation (ATR), superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF and ILF respectively) and corticospinal tract (CST).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Effect of years of education and age on myelin water fraction (MWF) of global white matter (GWM) across controls and mild TBI. The linear fit over both control and mTBI is represented by the black line and the Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) and p-value between A) education (p=0.002, r=0.6) and B) age (p=0.3, r=0.2) with MWF.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Age adjusted A) Crystallized and B) Fluid Cognitive Composite scores for each subject group and subject, and independent t-test comparison between control and mTBI. p-values are represented as ∗<0.05.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Age adjusted A) Crystallized (p=0.3, r=-0.3) and B) Fluid(p=0.6, r=0.1) Crystallized Composite scores compared to global white matter (GWM) myelin water fraction (MWF) for mild TBI participants.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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