Arterial Spin Labeling Perfusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reveals Resting Cerebral Blood Flow Alterations Specific to Retinitis Pigmentosa Patients

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study aimed to assess resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes in retinitis pigmentosa (RP) patients using a pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) perfusion method.

Methods: Forty-nine RP patients and 51 healthy controls (HCs) underwent T1-weighted structural and pCASL sequence magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans at rest. Two-sample t-tests were performed to compare CBF differences between groups. Pearson correlation was used to analyze relationships between CBF values and clinical variables in the RP group.

Results: Compared with HCs, RP patients had significantly lower CBF values in the bilateral cuneus/lingual gyrus/precuneus/posterior cingulate/middle occipital gyrus. In the RP group, CBF values in the left middle occipital and inferior occipital gyrus were positively correlated with mean retinal nerve fiber layer thickness; furthermore, CBF values in several regions were correlated with duration of disease and age of onset.

Conclusions: Our results highlighted that RP patients exhibited decreased CBF values in the visual cortices and vision-related cortices. The results suggest that altered CBF might contribute to trans-synaptic retrograde degeneration of the visual pathway in RP patients.

KEYWORDS:

• Retinitis pigmentosa
• retinal degeneration
• pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling
• cerebral blood flow
• magnetic resonance imaging

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the subjects who participated in this study.

Availability of materials and data

They are available on special request.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest with regard to this work.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.81470628) and the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (2017YFE0103400).