Structural and Functional Abnormalities in Knee Osteoarthritis Pain Revealed With Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Main Authors: Gong, Q. (Author), Guo, H. (Author), He, C. (Author), Huang, X. (Author), Qiu, L. (Author), Wang, Y. (Author), Zhang, J. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
• Subjects: adult; age; ALFF; Article; cerebellum; clinical article; cognitive defect; controlled study; data analysis; disease assessment; disease duration; female; fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation; functional magnetic resonance imaging; fusiform gyrus; gender; GMV; gray matter volume; hippocampus; human; insula; knee osteoarthritis; knee osteoarthritis pain; male; middle aged; mood disorder; motor dysfunction; multimodal imaging; nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; occipital gyrus; pain assessment; pain severity; primary motor cortex; resting-state fMRI; structural magnetic resonance imaging; structural MRI; visual impairment
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 The knee osteoarthritis (KOA) pain is the most common form of arthritis pain affecting millions of people worldwide. Long-term KOA pain causes motor impairment and affects affective and cognitive functions. However, little is known about the structural and functional abnormalities induced by long-term KOA pain. In this work, high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) and resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data were acquired in patients with KOA and age-, sex-matched healthy controls (HC). Gray matter volume (GMV) and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) were used to study the structural and functional abnormalities in patients with KOA. Compared with HC, patients with KOA showed reduced GMV in bilateral insula and bilateral hippocampus, and reduced fALFF in left cerebellum, precentral gyrus, and the right superior occipital gyrus. Patients with KOA also showed increased fALFF in left insula and bilateral hippocampus. In addition, the abnormal GMV in left insula and fALFF in left fusiform were closely correlated with the pain severity or disease duration. These results indicated that long KOA pain leads to brain structural and functional impairments in motor, visual, cognitive, and affective functions that related to brain areas. Our findings may facilitate to understand the neural basis of KOA pain and the future therapy to relieve disease symptoms. Copyright © 2021 Guo, Wang, Qiu, Huang, He, Zhang and Gong.