Brain Structural and Functional MRI of Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Date
2019-05-30
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Abstract
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a highly-disabling and painful, chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IMID) of the bowel, with an annual incidence and prevalence that continue to rise. IBD diagnosis commonly occurs during young adulthood, and thus greatly impacts an individual’s productivity, leading to substantial economic burden. IBD patients can also experience behavioral symptoms, including mood and sleep disorders, depression and fatigue. While medication and surgery successfully alleviate somatic symptoms, they only partially treat behavioral symptoms. In fact, these symptoms are often considered as emotional reactions to illness and are left untreated, diminishing the quality-of-life of patients and complicating their clinical management. Evidence suggests that these symptoms have a neurological basis, as a result of the impact of inflammatory responses on gut-to-brain signalling pathways. In this thesis, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques were used to compare the structure and function of brain regions and networks in IBD patients, relative to control subjects. Regions of the basal ganglia exhibited greater volume and decreased susceptibility (a potential indicator of decreased metabolism) in IBD patients. Altered functional connections between these regions as well as connections with motor-related and cognitive areas were also observed. Given the association between the observed regions and symptoms commonly experienced by IBD patients, our studies suggest there is indeed a neurological component to observed IBD-related symptoms. Future longitudinal studies to examine treatment response and specific behavioral domains are warranted, to fully elucidate the interaction between the brain and inflammatory processes in the setting of IBD.
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Brain MRI, QSM, IBD, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multimodal MRI, Neurosceince, resting state fMRI
Citation
Heidari, F. (2019). Brain Structural and Functional MRI of Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.