Brain Microstructural Abnormalities Are Related to Physiological Alterations in End-Stage Renal Disease

To study whole-brain microstructural alterations in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and examine the relationship between brain microstructure and physiological indictors in the disease.

Diffusion tensor imaging data were collected from 35 patients with ESRD (28 men, 18-61 years) and 40 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs, 32 men, 22-58 years). A voxel-wise analysis was then used to identify microstructural alterations over the whole brain in the ESRD patients compared with the HCs. Multiple biochemical measures of renal metabolin, vascular risk factors, general cognitive ability and dialysis duration were correlated with microstructural integrity for the patients.

Compared to the HCs, the ESRD patients exhibited disrupted microstructural integrity in not only white matter (WM) but also gray matter (GM) regions, as characterized by decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD). Further correlation analyses revealed that the in MD, AD and RD values showed significantly positive correlations with the blood urea nitrogen in the left superior temporal gyrus and significantly negative correlations with the calcium levels in the left superior frontal gyrus (orbital part) in the patients.

Our findings suggest that ESRD is associated with widespread diffusion abnormalities in both WM and GM regions in the brain, and microstructural integrity of several GM regions are related to biochemical alterations in the disease.