Abstract
Adequate cerebral blood flow (CBF) is necessary to maintain brain metabolism and function. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is an emerging MRI technique offering a non-invasive and reliable quantification of CBF. The genetic basis of CBF has not been well documented, and one approach to investigate this is to examine its heritability. The current study aimed to examine the heritability of CBF using ASL data from a cohort of community-dwelling older twins (41 monozygotic (MZ) and 25 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs; age range, 65–93 years; 56.4% female). The results showed that the cortex had higher CBF than subcortical gray matter (GM) regions, and CBF in the GM regions of the anterior cerebral artery (ACA) territory was lower than that of the middle (MCA) and posterior (PCA) cerebral arteries. After accounting for the effects of age, sex and scanner, moderate heritability was identified for global CBF (h2 = 0.611; 95% CI = 0.380–0.761), as well as for cortical and subcortical GM and the GM in the major arterial territories (h2 = 0.500–0.612). Strong genetic correlations (GCs) were found between CBF in subcortical and cortical GM regions, as well as among the three arterial territories (ACA, MCA, PCA), suggesting a largely convergent genetic control for the CBF in brain GM. The moderate heritability of CBF warrants future investigations to uncover the genetic variants and genes that regulate CBF.
Highlights
Accounting for ∼20% of body’s oxygen consumption for normal function (Attwell and Laughlin, 2001), the brain is the most metabolically active human organ
We aimed to identify the heritability of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in a cohort of older twins using the latest Arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion imaging techniques
gray matter (GM) CBF was significantly lower in the anterior cerebral artery (ACA) territory than that in MCA (p < 0.001) and Posterior cerebral artery (PCA) (p < 0.001; Figure 1)
Summary
Accounting for ∼20% of body’s oxygen consumption for normal function (Attwell and Laughlin, 2001), the brain is the most metabolically active human organ. Due to the limited intracellular energy storage within neurons, adequate cerebral blood flow (CBF) is essential to maintain neuronal metabolism and brain function. Available findings on the age effects on CBF have been. Most studies focusing on normal aging participants have reported an age-related decrease in CBF (Zhang et al, 2017; Tarumi and Zhang, 2018), the age effects on cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (i.e., oxygen demand for metabolism) are inconsistent (Marchal et al, 1992; Lu et al, 2011). Heterogeneity in aging-induced CBF alteration has been observed across brain regions, but the spatial pattern varies among studies (Lee et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2011). The reasons underlying the CBF reduction in aging are still largely unknown, but impaired cardiovascular function (Tarumi and Zhang, 2018) and disrupted CBF autoregulation (Cipolla, 2009) may contribute to the decline
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