Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Neuroinflammation in Chronic Pain
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Research Paper Magnetic resonance imaging of neuroinflammation in chronic pain: a role for astrogliosis? Changjin Junga,b, Eric Ichescoc, Eva-Maria Rataia,d, Ramon Gilberto Gonzaleza,d, Tricia Burdoe, Marco L. Loggiaa,d, Richard E. Harrisc, Vitaly Napadowa,d,f,* Abstract Noninvasive measures of neuroinflammatory processes in humans could substantially aid diagnosis and therapeutic development for many disorders, including chronic pain. Several proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) metabolites have been linked with glial activity (ie, choline and myo-inositol) and found to be altered in chronic pain patients, but their role in the neuroinflammatory cascade is not well known. Our multimodal study evaluated resting functional magnetic resonance imaging connectivity and 1H-MRS metabolite concentration in insula cortex in 43 patients suffering from fibromyalgia, a chronic centralized pain disorder previously demonstrated to include a neuroinflammatory component, and 16 healthy controls. Patients demonstrated elevated choline (but not myo-inositol) in anterior insula (aIns) (P 5 0.03), with greater choline levels linked with worse pain interference (r 5 0.41, P 5 0.01). In addition, reduced resting functional connectivity between aIns and putamen wasassociatedwithbothpaininterference(wholebrainanalysis,pcorrected , 0.01) and elevated aIns choline (r 520.37, P 5 0.03). In fact, aIns/putamen connectivity statistically mediated the link between aIns choline and pain interference (P , 0.01), highlighting the pathway by which neuroinflammation can impact clinical pain dysfunction. To further elucidate the molecular substrates of the effects observed, we investigated how putative neuroinflammatory 1H-MRS metabolites are linked with ex vivo tissue inflammatory markers in a nonhuman primate model of neuroinflammation. Results demonstrated that cortical choline levels were correlated with glial fibrillary acidic protein, a known marker for astrogliosis (Spearman r 5 0.49, P 5 0.03). Choline, aputativeneuroinflammatory1H-MRS-assessed metabolite elevated in fibromyalgia and associated with pain interference, may be linked with astrogliosis in these patients. Keywords: Chronic pain, Pain interference, Fibromyalgia, Neuroinflammation, Astrogliosis 1. Introduction with neuroinflammation,13 choline and myo-inositol, are Prior studies have suggested that magnetic resonance altered in chronic pain patients suffering from fibromyalgia (FM). Brain neuroinflammation has been noted in animal imaging (MRI) methods such as proton magnetic resonance 29 spectroscopy (1H-MRS)3,13 may be promising for noninvasive models of chronic pain, and FM is a chronic centralized evaluation of neuroinflammation. Our aim was to explicitly pain disorder that has recently been shown to display evaluate whether 1H-MRS metabolites previously associated a neuroinflammatory component assessed with more invasive positron emission tomography (PET).2 We further sought to evaluate possible mechanisms by which levels of the above- Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed 1 at the end of this article. mentioned H-MRS metabolites are linked with neuroinflam- mation and contribute to chronic pain pathology. R.E. Harris and V. Napadow contributed equally to this work. Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that neuro- a Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States, b Clinical inflammation, mediated by activation of microglia or astrocytes, is Research Division, Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, South Korea, pronounced in chronic pain patients. For instance, PET imaging c Department of Anesthesiology, Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center, using the glia-linked radioligand [11C] PBR28 demonstrated d University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, Department of Radiology, increased binding for chronic low back pain patients and Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, 2,4,31 2 United States, e Department of Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, FM, with elevated levels linked with fatigue. In contrast to 1 PA, United States, f Department of Anesthesiology, Pain Management Center, PET, H-MRS is a noninvasive neuroimaging technique that has Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Chestnut Hill, MA, suggested neuroinflammation by quantifying levels of metabolites United States such as choline, which shows greater concentration in glial cells *Corresponding author. Address: Center for Integrative Pain Neuroimaging, Martinos than neurons, and has been linked with glial cell membrane Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 13 1 #2301 149 Thirteenth St, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States. Tel.: 11-617-724-3402; turnover. Myo-inositol, another H-MRS metabolite, plays a role fax: 11-617-726-7422. E-mail address: [email protected] (V. Napadow). in regulating glial cell volume and may also be a marker for 13 Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear neuroinflammation. Myo-inositol is believed to be an essential in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on requirement for cell growth, an osmolyte, and a storage source of the journal’s Web site (www.painjournalonline.com). glucose.50 Furthermore, this metabolite is thought to serve as PAIN 00 (2020) 1–10 marker of neuroinflammation/gliosis10,46; however, its role as © 2020 International Association for the Study of Pain a glial marker has also been questioned.44 Choline and/or myo- http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001815 inositol are elevated in the anterior cingulate cortex in spinal cord Month 2020· Volume 00· Number 00 www.painjournalonline.com 1 Copyright © 2020 by the International Association for the Study of Pain. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. 2 C. Jung et al.·00 (2020) 1–10 PAIN® injury patients with neuropathic pain57 and rheumatoid arthritis usage of all subjects has been included in Supplementary Table 1 patients.18 Choline has also been found to be elevated in the (available at http://links.lww.com/PAIN/A952). anterior cingulate cortex in chronic pelvic pain patients and We enrolled 43 (N 5 43) female FM patients and 16 (N 5 16) associated with higher levels of negative affect.24 However, the health controls (HCs). All subjects were right-handed and there precise role that choline and myo-inositol play in neuroinflamma- was no statistically significant age difference between FM and HC tion and how they are linked with other markers and maladaptive groups (FM: 41.07 6 11.64 years old, HC: 44.94 6 16.29 years brain changes in FM are unknown. old, mean 6 SD; P 5 0.31, 2-sample Student t-test). Twelve In this study, analyses focused on whether purported 1H-MRS patients reported using pregabalin or gabapentin for treatment, markers of neuroinflammation (ie, choline and myo-inositol) are which was controlled for in analyses due to our prior publications linked with functional brain connectivity and clinical variables for demonstrating significant neuroimaging changes within the insula FM. Our prior neuroimaging studies with chronic pain patients after pregabalin treatment.25 demonstrated that anterior insula (aIns) cortex connectivity was increased to the default mode network37 and, specifically, aIns to 2.2. Image acquisition and preprocessing medial prefrontal cortex connectivity was associated with 1H-MRS Glx metabolite concentration and clinical pain intensity in pelvic 2.2.1. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy pain patients.7 In a separate study, FM patients’ response to 1H-MRS acquisition was conducted on a 3.0T scanner Philips pharmacotherapy was associated with reduced 1H-MRS Glx Ingenia 3.0T (Philips Healthcare, Best, the Netherlands) using metabolite concentration and insula connectivity to default mode a 15-channel receive head coil. Anatomical T1-weighted images network brain regions.25 Given prior evidence of physiological (Axial 3D-MP-RAGE, repetition time (TR)/echo time (TE) 5 8.2/3.7 disruption in the insula cortex, we assessed 1H-MRS-derived ms, matrix 5 240 3 240, number slices 5 154) were acquired to metabolite levels in both anterior and posterior insula (pIns), and guide region of interest (ROI) definition for 1H-MRS. PRESS single functional connectivity between insula and the rest of the brain. An voxel spectra (TR/TE 5 2000/35 ms) were acquired from a 2 3 2 exploratory analysis evaluated the fractional amplitude of low- 3 3-cm sized voxel covering the right aIns region. A second voxel frequency fluctuations (fALFF) of the resting functional MRI (fMRI) was acquired in the right pIns region. Values for different signal, which has also been associated with neuroinflammation in metabolites were computed from the raw spectra data based chronic pain.6,26 Finally, to better understand the mechanisms on a linear combination of individual spectra using the LCModel supporting altered choline or myo-inositol in neuroinflammation, software42 (Version 6.3; Stephen Provencher, Inc, Oakville, ON, we directly linked levels of these metabolites with tissue pathology Canada). Because our study focused on potential neuroinflam- markers for astrogliosis and microglia activation in a nonhuman mation, analyses evaluated choline and myo-inositol concentra- primate model of widespread viral neuroinflammation.48 tion. For the sake of transparency,