NEFROCOG Pre-dialysis CKD Brain MRI

This entry covers the brain MRI cohort of a single-center, cross-sectional study at the Hiperdia Minas Center in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. The patients come from NEFROCOG, a database built to study cognition in people with chronic kidney disease who are treated conservatively and not on dialysis. The study asked whether mild cognitive impairment in these patients goes along with lower kidney function, higher inflammatory cytokines or changes that radiologists can see on brain MRI. The images are not public. A figshare record run by SciELO holds the article's figures and tables under CC BY 4.0.

Composition

Patients seen at the center between March 2013 and December 2014 were invited, 111 in total. Eighty finished the neuropsychological assessment after a 14-patient pilot was set aside, and 56 of them also had brain MRI and make up the analysed sample. Inclusion required kidney disease categories 1 to 5 without dialysis and age between 21 and 65 years. People with prior stroke, central nervous system disease, head trauma, HIV or MRI contraindications were excluded. Mean age was 56.3 years (SD 8.3). Twenty-nine patients (51.8%) scored in the impaired range of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Most patients had hypertension, and many had diabetes.

Acquisition

Brain MRI was done without contrast agent on a 1.5 Tesla Siemens Avanto scanner, following a protocol recommended for cognitive impairment and dementia. The article does not list the individual sequences. Blood was drawn for routine laboratory tests and for IL-4, IL-6, IL-17, TNF-alpha and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein.

Annotations

Neuroradiologists blinded to the clinical data rated each scan on three visual scales: Fazekas for white matter lesions, medial temporal atrophy (MTA) and global cortical atrophy (GCA). The article reports the score distributions by MoCA group.

Known limitations

• Images, ratings and per-patient data are not shared, and no terms for them are published.
• The MRI sequences are not specified.
• The sample is small, from one center, and limited to adults under 65.