PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Chun-Min Zhu AU - Ye Ma AU - Lei Xie AU - Jin-Zhuang Huang AU - Zong-Bo Sun AU - Shou-Xing Duan AU - Zhi-Rong Lin AU - Jing-Jing Yin AU - Hong-Bo Le AU - Dan-Miao Sun AU - Wen-Can Xu AU - Shu-Hua Ma TI - Spatial Working Memory Impairment in Patients with Non-neuropsychiatric Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Blood-oxygen-level Dependent Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study AID - 10.3899/jrheum.160290 DP - 2017 Feb 01 TA - The Journal of Rheumatology PG - 201--208 VI - 44 IP - 2 4099 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/44/2/201.short 4100 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/44/2/201.full SO - J Rheumatol2017 Feb 01; 44 AB - Objective. Using ethology and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore mild cognitive dysfunction and spatial working memory (WM) impairment in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) without overt neuropsychiatric symptoms (non-NPSLE) and to study whether any clinical biomarkers could serve as predictors of brain dysfunction in this disease.Methods. Eighteen non-NPSLE patients and 18 matched subjects were all tested using the Montreal cognitive assessment scale test and scanned using blood-oxygen-level dependent fMRI while performing the n-back task to investigate the activation intensity of some cognition-related areas.Results. Ethology results showed that non-NPSLE patients had mild cognitive dysfunction and memory dysfunction (p < 0.05). The fMRI scan confirmed a neural network consisting of bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), premotor area, parietal lobe, and supplementary motor area (SMA)/anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that was activated during the n-back task, with right hemisphere dominance. However, only the right SMA/ACC showed a load effect in the non-NPSLE group; the activation intensity of most WM-related brain areas for the non-NPSLE group was lower than for the control group under 3 memory loads. Further, we found that the activation intensity of some cognition-related areas, including the bilateral caudate nucleus/insula and hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus were lower than the control group under the memory loads. An inverse correlation existed between individual activation intensity and disease duration.Conclusion. Non-NPSLE–related brain damage with right DLPFC-posterior parietal lobe and parahippocampal gyrus default network causes impairment of spatial WM and mild cognitive dysfunction. Patients with longer disease duration would be expected to exhibit increased central nervous system damage.