Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Oct 9;19(1):419.
doi: 10.1186/s12967-021-03092-x.

Regional brain tissue changes in patients with cystic fibrosis

Bhaswati Roy  1 , Marlyn S Woo  2 , Susana Vacas  1 , Patricia Eshaghian  3 , Adupa P Rao  4 , Rajesh Kumar  5   6   7   8
Affiliations

Regional brain tissue changes in patients with cystic fibrosis

Bhaswati Roy et al. J Transl Med. .

Abstract

Background: Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients present with a variety of symptoms, including mood and cognition deficits, in addition to classical respiratory, and autonomic issues. This suggests that brain injury, which can be examined with non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is a manifestation of this condition. However, brain tissue integrity in sites that regulate cognitive, autonomic, respiratory, and mood functions in CF patients is unclear. Our aim was to assess regional brain changes using high-resolution T1-weighted images based gray matter (GM) density and T2-relaxometry procedures in CF over control subjects.

Methods: We acquired high-resolution T1-weighted images and proton-density (PD) and T2-weighted images from 5 CF and 15 control subjects using a 3.0-Tesla MRI. High-resolution T1-weighted images were partitioned to GM-tissue type, normalized to a common space, and smoothed. Using PD- and T2-weighted images, whole-brain T2-relaxation maps were calculated, normalized, and smoothed. The smoothed GM-density and T2-relaxation maps were compared voxel-by-voxel between groups using analysis of covariance (covariates, age and sex; SPM12, p < 0.001).

Results: Significantly increased GM-density, indicating tissues injury, emerged in multiple brain regions, including the cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, basal forebrain, insula, and frontal and prefrontal cortices. Various brain areas showed significantly reduced T2-relaxation values in CF subjects, indicating predominant acute tissue changes, in the cerebellum, cerebellar tonsil, prefrontal and frontal cortices, insula, and corpus callosum.

Conclusions: Cystic fibrosis subjects show predominant acute tissue changes in areas that control mood, cognition, respiratory, and autonomic functions and suggests that tissue changes may contribute to symptoms resulting from ongoing hypoxia accompanying the condition.

Keywords: Cognition; Gray matter density; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mood; T2-relaxometery.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Brain regions with higher gray matter density in CF patients over control subjects. Sites with increased gray matter density included the bilateral insula (a, b), left frontal cortices (c), bilateral basal forebrain (d, e), right hippocampus (f), right cerebellum (g), and right amygdala (h). All images are in neurological convention (L left; R right; M middle). Color bar indicates t-statistic values
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Brain sites with decreased T2 relaxation values in CF patients over control subjects. Reduced T2 relaxation values appeared in multiple regions and included in the right insula (a), bilateral prefrontal cortices (b, d), bilateral cerebellum (c, f), right corpus callosum (e), and left frontal cortices (g)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. About cystic fibrosis. Bethesda: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
    1. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation patient registry 2019 annual data report. Bethesda: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; 2019.
    1. Griesenbach U, Alton EW. Recent advances in understanding and managing cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator dysfunction. F1000prime Rep. 2015;7:64. doi: 10.12703/P7-64. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Deeks ED. Lumacaftor/ivacaftor: a review in cystic fibrosis. Drugs. 2016;76(12):1191–1201. doi: 10.1007/s40265-016-0611-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Welsh MJ, Ramsey BW, Accurso F, Cutting GR, et al. Cystic fibrosis. In: Scriver C, Beaudet AL, Sly W, Valle DL, Childs B, Kinzler K, et al., editors. The metabolic and molecular basis of inherited disease. 8. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2001. pp. 5121–5188.

Publication types