Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Increasing DTI studies have demonstrated that white matter microstructural abnormalities play an important role in type 2 diabetes mellitus–related cognitive impairment. In this study, the diffusional kurtosis imaging method was used to investigate WM microstructural alterations in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and to detect associations between diffusional kurtosis imaging metrics and clinical/cognitive measurements.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Diffusional kurtosis imaging and cognitive assessments were performed on 58 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and 58 controls. Voxel-based intergroup comparisons of diffusional kurtosis imaging metrics were conducted, and ROI-based intergroup comparisons were further performed. Correlations between the diffusional kurtosis imaging metrics and cognitive/clinical measurements were assessed after controlling for age, sex, and education in both patients and controls.
RESULTS: Altered diffusion metrics were observed in the corpus callosum, the bilateral frontal WM, the right superior temporal WM, the left external capsule, and the pons in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus compared with controls. The splenium of the corpus callosum and the pons had abnormal kurtosis metrics in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Additionally, altered diffusion metrics in the right prefrontal WM were significantly correlated with disease duration and attention task performance in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
CONCLUSIONS: With both conventional diffusion and additional kurtosis metrics, diffusional kurtosis imaging can provide additional information on WM microstructural abnormalities in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Our results indicate that WM microstructural abnormalities occur before cognitive decline and may be used as neuroimaging markers for predicting the early cognitive impairment in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Abbreviations
- AD
 - axial diffusivity
 - AK
 - axial kurtosis
 - CC
 - corpus callosum
 - DKI
 - diffusional kurtosis imaging
 - FA
 - fractional anisotropy
 - HbA1c
 - glycosylated hemoglobin
 - lEC
 - left external capsule
 - MD
 - mean diffusivity
 - MK
 - mean kurtosis
 - RD
 - radial diffusivity
 - rPF_WM
 - right prefrontal white matter
 - RK
 - radial kurtosis
 - RT of ANT
 - reaction time of Attention Network Test
 - T2DM
 - type 2 diabetes mellitus
 
Footnotes
Y. Xie and Y. Zhang contributed equally to this work.
- © 2017 American Society of Neuroradiology
 






