Introduction

Our previous study had shown altered nodal properties within the executive control networkin children with type I GD. And some studies confirmed that mood and global functioning showed significant improvement and psychological symptoms were fewer than before after a period of regular enzyme replacement therapy. But fewer studies have investigated the variation trend of brain topological properties in type I GD patients under regular enzyme replacement therapy(ERT) . So our study aims to explore this question.

Methods

Resting-state functional MRI scans were obtained from sixteen type I GD patients before and after a near five-year period with regular ERT. Utilizing graph-based network analysis, we compared alteration of topological properties of brain functional networks at global and nodal levels within them. Paried t test with false discovery rate correction was performed to investigate the differences. Pearson correlation analyses were carried out to test the relationships between clinical parameters and altered network properties.

Results

During a near five-year follow-up, the type I GD patients showed significantly increased local efficiency and normalized clustering coefficient () of the global network properties in some specific thresholds(p < 0.05, FDR corrected). Nine ROIs involving eight regions which included right inferior frontal gyrus, right superior parietal gyrus, pecuneus and left middle/inferior frontal Gyrus, inferior parietal sulcus, precuneus, thalamus showed increased nodal efficiency. Meanwhile five ROIs involving five regions which included right inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal gyrus, precuneus and left middle frontal gyrus, thalamus showed increased nodal degree. On the contrary, two ROIs involving three regions which included right crus I, VIII and Vllb showed decreased nodal degree. And one ROI which included crus VIII and Vllb showed decreased nodal efficiency. The altered ROIs were important component of the executive control network, salience network, default mode network, basal ganglia network and visuospatial network. No significant alterations of betweenness centrality values were found in all the hubs. Unfortunately, no correlations were found between the altered nodal efficiency and the clinical parameters.

Conclusion

We are the first to investigate the alteration trend of the functional brain network in type I GD patients. After a near five-year follow-up, these patient showed increased efficiency of functional segregation in brain network and more diffuse involved and reorganized nodes, which may to some extent explained the improvement in mood and global functioning and the less psychological symptoms. And we believe that our results provide new insight to further understand the neurophysiological change of the type I GD patients.

Acknowledgements

No acknowledgement found.

References

No reference found.