title: Liver transplantation nearly normalizes brain spontaneous activity and cognitive function at 1 month: a resting-state functional MRI study.
abstract: To investigate the short-term brain activity changes in cirrhotic patients with Liver transplantation (LT) using resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) with regional homogeneity (ReHo) method. Twenty-six cirrhotic patients as transplant candidates and 26 healthy controls were included in this study. The assessment was repeated for a sub-group of 12 patients 1 month after LT. ReHo values were calculated to evaluate spontaneous brain activity and whole brain voxel-wise analysis was carried to detect differences between groups. Correlation analyses were performed to explore the relationship between the change of ReHo with the change of clinical indexes pre- and post-LT. Compared to pre-LT, ReHo values increased in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right inferior parietal lobule (IPL), right supplementary motor area (SMA), right STG and left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) in patients post-LT. Compared to controls, ReHo values of post-LT patients decreased in the right precuneus, right SMA and increased in bilateral temporal pole, left caudate, left MFG, and right STG. The changes of ReHo in the right SMA, STG and IFG were correlated with change of digit symbol test (DST) scores (P < 0.05 uncorrected). This study found that, at 1 month after LT, spontaneous brain activity of most brain regions with decreased ReHo in pre-LT was substantially improved and nearly normalized, while spontaneous brain activity of some brain regions with increased ReHo in pre-LT continuously increased. ReHo may provide information on the neural mechanisms of LT' effects on brain function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Tianjin First Central Hospital, No.24 Fu Kang Road, Nan Kai District, Tianjin, 300192, China.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Lixiang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jianhui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.forename: Shuangshuang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Lihua
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Panli
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zuo
authors.forename: Long Jiang
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000601:surgery; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000639:trends*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000639:trends*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012146:Rest / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors