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Longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging after pediatric traumatic brain injury: Impact of age at injury and time since injury on pathway integrity.

ABSTRACT: Following pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI), longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging may characterize alterations in initial recovery and subsequent trajectory of white matter development. Our primary aim examined effects of age at injury and time since injury on pathway microstructure in children ages 6-15 scanned 3 and 24 months after TBI. Microstructural values generated using tract-based spatial statistics extracted from core association, limbic, and projection pathways were analyzed using general linear mixed models. Relative to children with orthopedic injury, the TBI group had lower fractional anisotropy (FA) bilaterally in all seven pathways. In left-hemisphere association pathways, school-aged children with TBI had the lowest initial pathway integrity and showed the greatest increase in FA over time suggesting continued development despite incomplete recovery. Adolescents showed limited change in FA and radial diffusivity and had the greatest residual deficit suggesting relatively arrested development. Radial diffusivity was persistently elevated in the TBI group, implicating dysmyelination as a core contributor to chronic post-traumatic neurodegenerative changes. The secondary aim compared FA values over time in the total sample, including participants contributing either one or two scans to the analysis, to the longitudinal cases contributing two scans. For each pathway, FA values and effect sizes were very similar and indicated extremely small differences in measurement of change over time in the total and longitudinal samples. Statistical approaches incorporating missing data may reliably estimate the effects of TBI and provide increased power to identify whether pathways show neurodegeneration, arrested development, or continued growth following pediatric TBI. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3929-3945, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

SUBMITTER: Ewing-Cobbs L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5053864 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The chronic consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI) may contribute to the increased risk for early cognitive decline and dementia, primarily due to diffusion axonal injury. Previous studies in mild TBI (mTBI) have been controversial in describing the white matter tract integrity changes occurring at acute and subacute post-injury. In this prospective longitudinal study, we aim to investigate the longitudinal changes of white matter (WM) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and their correlations with neuropsychological tests. Thirty-three patients with subacute mTBI and 31 matched healthy controls were studied with an extensive imaging and clinical battery. Neuroimaging was obtained within 7 days post-injury for acute scans and repeated at 1 and 3 months post-injury. Using a region-of-interest-based approach, tract-based spatial statistics was used to conduct voxel-wise analysis on diffusion changes in mTBI and was compared to those of healthy matched controls, scanned during the same time period and rescanned with an interval similar to that of patients. We found decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the left anterior limb of internal capsule (ALIC) and right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) during the 7 days post-injury, which showed longitudinal evidence of recovery following 1 month post-injury. Increased FA values in these two tracts at 1 month post-injury were positively associated with better performance on cognitive information processing speed at initial assessment. By contrast, there were also some tracts (right anterior corona radiata, forceps major, and body of corpus callosum) exhibiting the continuing loss of integrity sustaining even beyond 3 months, which can predict the persisting post-concussion syndromes. Continuing loss of structural integrity in some tracts may contribute to the persistent post-concussion syndromes in mTBI patients, suggesting certain tracts providing an objective biomarker for tracking the pathological recovery process following mTBI.

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Longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging after pediatric traumatic brain injury: Impact of age at injury and time since injury on pathway integrity.

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