Abstract
Abnormal psychological processing in the central nervous system has been found in Crohn's disease (CD) patients. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance images of 57 inactive and 58 active CD patients, and 92 healthy controls (HC) were obtained. The psychological assessment used a psychological questionnaire that was collected within 1 week before functional MRI examination. We investigated the neural basis of CD patients and the correlation among regional homogeneity (ReHo), clinical features and psychological assessment scores. We found that more severe psychological assessment disorder scores were observed in the active CD group than in the inactive CD group and HC group (P<0.001). Compared with HC, the active CD patients exhibited higher ReHo values in the frontal superior medial, frontal middle and lower values in the postcentral, supplementary motor area, and temporal middle. Meanwhile, inactive CD patients exhibited higher ReHo values in the frontal middle and lower ReHo values in the precentral, postcentral and putamen (all voxel P< 0.001, cluster P<0.01, corrected). The values of the frontal superior medial, postcentral and supplementary motor area were correlation with psychological assessment scores (r = 0.38, −0.41, −0.32, P = 0.001, 0.014, 0.003), and the clinical features of simple endoscopic score for Crohn's disease and erythrocyte sedimentation rate were negatively correlated with psychological assessment scores in active CD patients (r = −0.35, −0.34, P = 0.06, 0.08). These results provide evidence for abnormal resting-state brain activity in CD and suggest that the psychological of CD may play a critical role in brain function.
Highlights
Crohn’s disease (CD) is an autoimmune and relapsing gastrointestinal disease
The regional homogeneity (ReHo) values of the left frontal middle brain regions were positively correlated with the obsessive-compulsive, depression, and bigoted scores, and negatively correlated with the systemic symptoms score in these CD patients respectively (r = 0.27, 0.28, 0.28, −0.27, P = 0.038, 0.035, 0.034, 0.004). This is a study to research the functional alterations of regional brain areas in active and inactive CD patients with psychological assessment disorders based on ReHo
The results of this study showed that active CD patients had more severe psychological assessment scores and intestinal clinical features than in inactive patients, which correlated with significantly increased ReHo in the right frontal superior medial and left frontal middle and decreased ReHo in the right postcentral, supplementary motor area, and left temporal middle
Summary
Crohn’s disease (CD) is an autoimmune and relapsing gastrointestinal disease. The etiology remains unclear. Only a few studies have examined brain activity in patients with CD. In a study involving 25 CD patients with and without abdominal pain and 32 healthy controls (HCs), abnormal activities in the insula and middle cingulate cortex were closely related to the severity of abdominal pain [14]. Further investigations are necessary to determine whether changes exist in specific brain regions in CD patients and whether these changes are correlated with gastrointestinal disease activity and psychological symptoms. In this study, we divided CD patients into an active CD group and an inactive CD group and employed ReHo to compare the differences in aberrant brain activity between the two CD patient groups and the HC group. We hypothesized that CD patients would have altered aberrant brain function and that brain neuroimaging of ReHo may be correlated with clinical features and psychological assessment scores
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