ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1570425
Changes in white matter microstructure in the brain of patients with inflammatory bowel disease are associated with abdominal pain
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
- 2Department of Radiology, Chongqing General Hospital, Chongqing, China
- 3First People's Hospital of Chongqing Liangjiang New District, Chongqing, China
- 4Children‘s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, Chongqing Municipality, China
- 5Department of Gastroenterology, Chongqing General Hospital, Chongqing, China, Chongqing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: In recent years, interest in the brain-gut axis has increased, and interactions between the brain and the gut may be closely related to recurrent clinical symptoms in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. We aimed to investigate the changes in white matter microstructure in the brain of patients and their relationships with clinical symptoms. Methods: A total of 96 patients with inflammatory bowel disease and 47 healthy controls were recruited for this study. All participants underwent diffusion tensor imaging of the brain.Tract-based spatial statistics were used to compare differences in brain white matter microstructure between the patients and healthy controls. Partial least squares correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationships between changes in white matter microstructure in patients and their clinical symptoms.Results: Compared with healthy controls, patients with inflammatory bowel disease presented decreased mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity in multiple white matter regions (p < 0.05, corrected). Further analysis revealed that patients with ulcerative colitis did not present significant differences in brain white matter microstructure (p > 0.05), whereas patients with Crohn's disease presented abnormalities in multiple regions, including the corticospinal tracts, corona radiata, and corpus callosum. Multivariate analysis revealed that altered white matter in the brains of patients with inflammatory bowel disease was mainly positively correlated with pain-related negative emotions, such as scores from the fear of pain questionnaire and the pain anxiety symptoms scale.In patients with inflammatory bowel disease, particularly those with Crohn's disease, alterations in the white matter microstructure that are primarily involved in pain processing have been observed.
Keywords: inflammatory bowel disease, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Brain white matter, Negative emotions, multivariate analysis
Received: 03 Feb 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lingqin, Wuli, Ling, Xinyan, Xin, Li, Yan and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kang Li, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.