Arterial spin labeling analysis of the cerebral blood flow in systemic lupus erythematosus patients / 医学研究生学报

ABSTRACT

Objective Neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus ( SLE) is a common complication of SLE, whose path-ogenesis is not yet clear but associated with the alteration of cerebral blood flow ( CBF) in some studies.This study was to investigate the CBF alteration in SLE patients without overt neuropsychiatric symptoms by arterial spin labeling ( ASL) MRI. Methods Twenty-eight SLE patients without overt neuropsychiatric symptoms and 30 age-and sex-matched healthy controls underwent conventional MRI and ASL examinations, and all received such neuropsychologic tests as number connecting test-A ( NCT-A ) , digit symbol test ( DST ) , self-rating anxiety scale ( SAS ) , and self-rating depression scale ( SDS) .Independent sample-t test was used to detect the mean CBF in the whole brain, gray matter, and white matter of the SLE patients and healthy controls.The voxel-wise CBF maps of the two groups of subjects were further analyzed with the SPM8 software to compare the regional CBF between the two groups, followed by evaluation of the correlation between the regional CBF values and clinical markers. Results In comparison with the healthy controls, the SLE pa-tients showed significantly reduced CBF in the gray matter (40.5 ±3.7 vs 37.3 ±6.5, P=0.028) and the whole brain (38.0 ±3.5 vs 35.1 ±6.1, P=0.032), especially in the supplementary motor area and the adjacent middle cingulate, anterior cingulate, left medial frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left insula (P<0.05, FWE corrected).The NCT-A score was negatively correlated with the CBF values of the left medial frontal gyrus (r=-0.402, P=0.032) and left inferior frontal gyrus (r=-0.382, P=0.045) of the SLE patients. Conclusion ASL and MRI showed significantly reduced cerebral blood flow in the SLE patient without overt neu-ropsychiatric manifestations, which was correlated with the change of the patient's cognitive function.