Cerebral Blood Flow in Community-Based Older Twins Is Moderately Heritable: An Arterial Spin Labeling Perfusion Imaging Study

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Margaret J. Wright¹  Vibeke Catts²  Jiyang Jiang²  Forrest C. Koch²  Julian N. Trollor³  David Ames⁵  Wei Wen⁷  Perminder S. Sachdev⁷  Anbupalam Thalamuthu⁸  Qun Xu⁹  Tao Liu^1,10 

[1] 0Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia;Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW, Australia;Department of Developmental Disability Neuropsychiatry (3DN), University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW, Australia;Department of Health Manage Centre, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;National Ageing Research Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia;NeuroImaging Genetics Laboratory, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, QLD, Australia;Neuropsychiatric Institute, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, NSW, Australia;Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, NSW, Australia;Renji-UNSW CHeBA Neurocognitive Centre, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China;

关键词: cerebral blood flow;    heritability;    twin study;    community-dwelling;    aging;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnagi.2019.00169

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Adequate cerebral blood flow (CBF) is necessary to maintain brain metabolism and function. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is an emerging MRI technique offering a non-invasive and reliable quantification of CBF. The genetic basis of CBF has not been well documented, and one approach to investigate this is to examine its heritability. The current study aimed to examine the heritability of CBF using ASL data from a cohort of community-dwelling older twins (41 monozygotic (MZ) and 25 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs; age range, 65–93 years; 56.4% female). The results showed that the cortex had higher CBF than subcortical gray matter (GM) regions, and CBF in the GM regions of the anterior cerebral artery (ACA) territory was lower than that of the middle (MCA) and posterior (PCA) cerebral arteries. After accounting for the effects of age, sex and scanner, moderate heritability was identified for global CBF (h2 = 0.611; 95% CI = 0.380–0.761), as well as for cortical and subcortical GM and the GM in the major arterial territories (h2 = 0.500–0.612). Strong genetic correlations (GCs) were found between CBF in subcortical and cortical GM regions, as well as among the three arterial territories (ACA, MCA, PCA), suggesting a largely convergent genetic control for the CBF in brain GM. The moderate heritability of CBF warrants future investigations to uncover the genetic variants and genes that regulate CBF.

【 授权许可】

Unknown