The morphological study of brain cortical in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Objective: In order to observe gray matter variation in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) via morphological analysis method of voxelbased morphometry(VBM) and FSL software. Materials and Methods: Twenty-five patients of COPD(patient group) and twenty-five volunteers matched with age, gender, cultural background and no history of neurologic or psychopathic disorders(control group) were recruited. All subjects were examined, including pulmonary function, mental state examination and blood gas. 3D T1 WI of brain were performed on Siemens Verio 3.0 T MRI scanning. All the imaging were drawn to PC workstation and computed with software of FSL(cluster size reduced 70 voxel). Statistical analysis was performed using the general linear model to detect whole brain gray matter volume differences between the two groups. Results: Compared with the control group, the patients with COPD had markedly lower scores in the activities of daily life, the Mini-Mental State Examination, and Visual Reproduction, and Figure Memory tests. Statistical correlation between two groups showed significant gray matter volume loss in the regions of frontal lobe(bilateral orbital gyros, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus triangle), medial frontal gyrus, right anterior insular gyrus, and deep nuclei(P0.01). According to the statistics of t value maximum voxels in coordinate of MNI, the Brodmann regions of the brain, which obviously atrophy, were mainly in 47 brain regions(superior frontal gyrus), the bilateral 13 brain regions(insular cortex), 22 brain regions(superior temporal gyrus), bilateral 32 and 24 brain regions. Conclusions: In COPD patients, the cortex volume of multiple brain areas can reduce, the damage regions mainly relate to bilateral prefrontal cortex, medial frontal gyrus, and right anterior insular gyrus. The regions of brain cortex injury are consistent with other diseases, such as obstructive sleep apnea, congenital central expiratory deficiency syndrome, and the cerebral injury of people living in high altitude areas.