Authors :
Presenting Author: Yusha Tang, MD – West China Hospital of Sichuan University
Anjiao Peng, MD – West China Hospital of Sichuan University
Leihao Sha, MD – West China Hospital of Sichuan University
Lei Chen, MD – West China Hospital of Sichuan University
Rationale:
Our recently published study indicated the proportion of patent foramen ovale (PFO) was found to be significantly higher in patients with epilepsy (PWE) than in controls without epilepsy. This study is to further explore the interaction between epilepsy and PFO on cortical structure (intracortical myelin content and cortical thickness) and its associations with clinical features.Methods:
We enrolled 120 patients with epilepsy in this study, including 60 patients with PFO and 60 patients without PFO. 120 matched healthy controls were recruited, comprising 60 with PFO and 60 without PFO. Intracortical myelin was investigated using the T1w/T2w ratio. Cortical thickness was estimated using FreeSurfer. The main effect of epilepsy and PFO as well as the epilepsy * PFO interaction were analyzed with a general linear model with age and sex as covariates for two-way analysis of variance. Spearman's correlation was used to assess potential correlations between intracortical myelin content, cortical thickness and clinical features.Results:
We observed that individuals with PFO showed a broad and diffuse increase in cortical thickness and changes in the strength of the myelinsensitive contrast within the cortex. Further, we also found a specific region in right inferior parietal cortex that exhibited PFO-related reductions in the intracortical myelin and a strong positive epilepsy and PFO interaction. And the course of disease was negatively correlated with the myelin index of this specific region (r = - 0.286, p < 0.001).