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Altered Cerebellar White Matter Integrity in Patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in the Acute Stage
Zhongqiu Wang1, Wenzhong Wu2, Yongkang Liu1
1Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, 155 Hanzhong Road, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu, China.
Background And Purpose:
Imaging studies of traumatic brain injury demonstrate that the cerebellum is often affected. We aim to examine fractional anisotropy alteration in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients in cerebellum-related white matter tracts.
Materials And Methods:
This prospective study included 47 mild traumatic brain injury patients in the acute stage and 37 controls. MR imaging and neurocognitive tests were performed in patients within 7 days of injury. White matter integrity was examined by using diffusion tensor imaging. We used three approaches, tract-based spatial statistics, graphical-model-based multivariate analysis, and region-of-interest analysis, to detect altered cerebellar white matter integrity in mild traumatic brain injury patients.
Results:
Results from three analysis methods were in accordance with each other, and suggested fractional anisotropy in the middle cerebellar peduncle and the pontine crossing tract was changed in the acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients, relative to controls (adjusted p-value < 0.05). Higher fractional anisotropy in the middle cerebellar peduncle was associated with worse performance in the fluid cognition composite (r = -0.289, p-value = 0.037).
Conclusion:
Altered cerebellar fractional anisotropy in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients is localized in specific regions and statistically associated with cognitive deficits detectable on neurocognitive testing.
