BACKGROUND: The brain and retina are derived from the neuroectoderm and have structural and functional similarities. Researchers have separately analyzed brain and retinal perfusion in psychosis patients, but few studies have investigated the relationship between them. While the retina can serve as a proxy for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, less is known for psychosis. Thus, this study aims to examine the connection between retinal and brain perfusion in patients with psychosis.
METHODS: A total of 48 participants, 17 healthy control and 31 probands, took part in the Bipolar and Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotype-2 (BSNIP-2) study at the Boston location at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Participants underwent arterial spin labeling MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and retinal OCTA (optical coherence tomography angiography) imaging to determine brain and retinal perfusion, respectively. Whole retinal layer (superficial, deep, and choriocapillaris) and lobe-wise brain perfusion (frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital, and cingulate cortices) was used for analyses. Statistical analysis was performed in R and results were summarized using basic descriptive statistics.
RESULTS: In probands, there was a significant positive correlation between vessel diameter index (VDI) and frontal lobe perfusion (r=0.74, p=0.000027) and between vessel diameter (VD) and frontal lobe perfusion (r=0.64, p=0.00077), but not for healthy controls. There was a significant negative correlation between VDI and temporal lobe perfusion (r=-0.56, p=0.0046), but not for healthy controls. There were no significant results for healthy controls or probands between retinal perfusion and occipital lobe perfusion.
CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that retinal perfusion may be a proxy marker for frontal lobe perfusion and could be used for predicting cognitive performance in a psychosis population given that the frontal lobe is primarily involved in executive functioning. There was an absence of a relationship between retinal perfusion and the occipital perfusion which suggests that retinal perfusion does not match visual neuronal pathway connections to the occipital cortex. These findings demonstrate a step towards appreciating how the retina can be leveraged to understand brain dysfunction in psychosis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48203 |
| Date | 26 February 2024 |
| Creators | Freeman, Cassidy |
| Contributors | Lizano, Paulo, Gong, Haiyan |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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