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Aberrant interhemispheric functional coordination in patients with HBV-related cirrhosis and minimal hepatic encephalopathy

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Abstract

Aberrant brain functional connectivity has been considered as the important mechanism underlying minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE); however, little is known about the change in interhemispheric connection in MHE patients. Twenty patients with HBV-related cirrhosis and MHE and 15 healthy controls were included in this study and underwent the resting-state fMRI scanning and diffusion tensor imaging. The functional connectivity between symmetric interhemispheric voxels was computed by a technique called voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC), in which the time series for each voxel in one hemisphere was correlated with that of its homotopic voxel. Diffusion tensor imaging was conducted to measure the mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) values in corpus callosum (CC). Compared with controls, MHE patients showed decreased regional VMHC in medial frontal gyrus, superior frontal gryus, anterior cingulate gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, postcentral gyrus, lingual gyrus, and middle occipital gyrus. MHE patients had significant decreased FA value in CC genu and CC splenium and increased MD value in CC genu. Pearson correlation analyses showed that the VMHC in anterior cingulate gyrus/medial frontal gyrus was correlated with FA/MD values of CC genu. These findings may suggest aberrant interhemispheric coordination in MHE and may provide new insight into the disease-related mechanisms.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the grants from the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program: No.2013CB733800, No.2013CB733803), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30910103905), and Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Southeast University (No. YBJJ1243).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular and Functional Imaging, Department of Radiology, Zhongda Hospital, Medical School, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210009, China

    Hua-Jun Chen, Yu Wang, Ming Yang, Xi-Qi Zhu & Gao-Jun Teng

  2. Department of Radiology, The Second Hospital of Nanjing, Medical School, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210002, China

    Xi-Qi Zhu

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  1. Hua-Jun Chen
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  2. Yu Wang
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  3. Ming Yang
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  4. Xi-Qi Zhu
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Correspondence to Gao-Jun Teng.

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Hua-Jun Chen and Yu Wang contributed equally to this work.

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Chen, HJ., Wang, Y., Yang, M. et al. Aberrant interhemispheric functional coordination in patients with HBV-related cirrhosis and minimal hepatic encephalopathy. Metab Brain Dis 29, 617–623 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-014-9505-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-014-9505-8

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