Altered resting-state cerebellar-cerebral functional connectivity in patients with end-stage renal disease

AbstractBackground End-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients have functional and structural brain abnormalities. The cerebellum also showed varying degrees of damage. However, no studies on cerebellar-cerebral functional connectivity (FC) have been conducted in ESRD patients. This study aimed to investigate the changes in cerebellar-cerebral FC in ESRD patients and its relationship with neuropsychological and clinical indexes.Methods Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological assessment were performed on 37 ESRD patients and 35 control subjects. Seed-based FC analysis was performed to investigate inter-group differences in cerebellar-cerebral FC. In addition, the relations of altered FC with the neuropsychological function and clinical indicators were analyzed in ERSD patients.Results ESRD patients exhibited alterations in cerebellar-cerebral FC involving the executive control network, default mode network, and affective-limbic network compared to control subjects (False discovery rate-corrected, p