Larger regional volume of the thalamus in diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: a cross-sectional study
- PDF / 1,343,863 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 11 Downloads / 185 Views
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Larger regional volume of the thalamus in diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: a cross-sectional study Cui Ping Mao 1
&
Fen Rong Chen 2 & Hong Hong Sun 1 & Mei Juan Shi 1 & Hua Juan Yang 1 & Xiao Hui Li 1 & Dun Ding 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract As a relay center between the cerebral cortex and various subcortical brain areas, the thalamus is repeatedly associated with the dysfunction of brain-gut interaction in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, the regional morphological alterations of the thalamus in IBS are not well defined. We acquired structural magnetic resonance data from 34 patients with IBS and 34 demographically similar healthy subjects. Data processing was performed using FMRIB’s Integrated Registration and Segmentation Tool (FIRST). Volumetric analysis and surface-based vertex analysis were both carried out to characterize the morphology of the thalamus and other subcortical structures. Our results suggested that the majority (31 cases) of the patients with IBS had diarrheapredominant symptoms. Volumetric analysis revealed a larger normalized volume of the right thalamus and left caudate nucleus in patients with IBS than in healthy controls. Surface analysis indicated that the difference arose mainly from the laterodorsal nucleus of the right thalamus, and the body of the left caudate nucleus. In addition, patients with IBS had different hemispheric asymmetries of the thalamus (rightward) and caudate nucleus (leftward) from controls (leftward for the thalamus and rightward for the caudate nucleus). In general, our results indicated that patients with diarrhea-predominant IBS had enlarged thalamus and caudate nucleus volumes, as well as altered hemispheric asymmetries of these two structures, compared with healthy controls. The neuroimaging evidence of these structural alterations helps clarify the underlying pathophysiology of diarrhea-predominant IBS. Keywords Irritable bowel syndrome . Thalamus . Caudate nucleus . Asymmetry . FSL-FIRST
Introduction Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most widely diagnosed disorders of gut-brain interaction (Drossman 2016), characterized by recurrent abdominal pain related to defecation and a change in stool frequency or form (Ford et al. 2017). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-019-00181-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Cui Ping Mao [email protected] * Hong Hong Sun [email protected] 1
Department of Medical Imaging, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, 157, Xiwu Road, 710004 Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Gastroenterology, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, 157, Xiwu Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China
Evidence from neuroimaging studies has provided new insights into the neural activity and circuitry associated with IBS, by revealing structural and functional
Data Loading...
