Open AccessWhite matter integrity of watershed areas is potentially influenced by hypoperfusion in the presence permanent atrial fibrillation
Author(s) -
П. М. Крупенин,
В. А. Перепелов,
Е. М. Перепелова,
Sergey Bordovsky,
Evgeny G. Sidorov,
I. S. Preobrazhenskaya,
О. N. Voskresenskaya,
А. А. Соколова
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
kardiovaskulârnaâ terapiâ i profilaktika
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 2619-0125
pISSN - 1728-8800
DOI - 10.15829/1728-8800-2021-2915
Subject(s) - medicine , white matter , atrial fibrillation , cardiology , diffusion mri , fractional anisotropy , magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear medicine , radiology
Aim. To test a hypothesis of hypoperfusion-induced white matter changes in patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib) and to present statistics to compute sample size for the upcoming studies. Material and methods. We included 30 inpatients with AFib and investigated them with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with standard sequencies and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). DTI data were analyzed with conventional ROI analysis in the Olea Sphere software and with watershed areas (WSA) mask in the FSL toolbox after nonlinear transformation of images to the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space. Wilcoxon test was used to compare diffusion characteristics across subgroups. Results. Median age of participants was 73 years (69-78), 18 (60%) patients had moderate signs of small vessel disease with Fazekas score of one. Twenty-one patients had paroxysmal AFib. Analysis of WSA revealed decreased white matter integrity in the parieto-occipital cortical WSA with a pattern of significantly increased mean diffusivity (p=0,039), and marginally significant decrease in fractional anisotropy (p=0,056). Rank-based effect size across areas under comparison was either small (0,2) or negligible, and with statistical power in the range of 0,05-1. Conclusion. Atrial fibrillation could have pathophysiologically feasible mechanism to affect white matter integrity in the watershed areas.