Abstract
IntroductionPatients under chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been reported to be associated with a higher prevalence of cognitive impairment (CI). However, it is still largely unknown whether the aberrant resting‐state spontaneous neuronal activity pattern reflected by the amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis will be associated with the CI in COPD patients.MaterialsA total of 28 COPD patients and 26 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Of all the subjects, structural and functional MRI data, spirometry tests performance and neuropsychological assessments of different cognitive domains were collected. Voxel‐based two‐sample t tests were used to detect brain regions showing differences in the ALFF value between COPD patients and healthy controls. An additional fMRI runs with supplementary oxygen delivery were employed to explore the impact of elevated partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2) or moderate hyperoxia on ALFF in COPD patients and healthy controls respectively.ResultsMore extensive white matter lesion was detected in COPD patients. COPD patients exhibit decreased ALFF value in bilateral basal ganglia areas and right thalamus, and aberrant ALFF value is correlated with PaO2 and pulmonary ventilation function (FEV1%pred). COPD patients performed worse in the Digit Span Test (reverse), Digit Symbol Substitution Test, Trail‐making test (A and B) than controls. After supplementary oxygen inhalation, the ALFF value of basal ganglia and right thalamus significantly increased in the controls, but not in the COPD patients.ConclusionsCOPD patients mainly exhibit impaired executive function but not long‐term memory in cognitive function assessment. Aberrant ALFF alteration in the deep brain may be directly related to lower PaO2 in COPD patients.
Highlights
Patients under chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been reported to be associated with a higher prevalence of cognitive impairment (CI)
The affected domains in‐ dicate that the COPD mainly associated with na‐MCI rather than a‐MCI, which is supported by the results of previous studies (Singh et al, 2014; Villeneuve et al, 2012)
Another interesting find‐ ing is that it takes longer time for COPD patients to copy a compli‐ cated line drawing in the recognition section of the Complex Figure Test (CFT) than normal control
Summary
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common chronic lung disease characterized by incompletely reversible airflow lim‐ itation, with shortness of breath and productive cough as main symptoms. An analysis of ALFF may provide important information for the spontaneous neuronal activity pattern specific to the COPD and the difference between COPD patients and healthy controls. Considering the impact of both hypoxia and hyperoxia in the spontaneous blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) signal, we attempted to explore whether concurrent oxygen inhalation will affect ALFF in brain areas show‐ ing difference between COPD patients and healthy controls (Bulte, 2016). This may help to increase our knowledge of the physiologic origin of ALFF and shed some light on the mechanism of the effect of home oxygen therapy
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