Assessment of spontaneous brain activity patterns in patients with iridocyclitis: a resting-state study

Several studies demonstrated that patients with iridocyclitis were associated with vision loss and cognitive decline, whereas alterations in spontaneous brain activity occur in iridocyclitis patients remains unknown. The study aimed to explore spontaneous brain activity changes in iridocyclitis patients. Twenty-six patients with iridocyclitis and 26 healthy controls were finally included in our study. Resting-state MRI (rs-MRI) scan was conducted on both groups and the whole brain amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFFs) value was collected to assess differences in spontaneous brain activity. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was analyzed to distinguish between the fMRI data of patients with iridocyclitis and healthy controls. Patients with iridocyclitis showed significantly lower ALFF values in the right inferior parietal lobule, right calcarine, right superior temporal gyrus and right precentral gyrus compared to healthy controls and significantly higher ALFF values in the left superior frontal gyrus (P < 0.01, false discovery rate correction). The ROC curve analysis of different brain areas showed that the accuracies of ALFF value specificity between the iridocyclitis and healthy controls of the area under the curve were over 0.8. Our study highlighted an altered spontaneous activity in multiple brain regions, including the visual cortex, default-mode network, auditory area and sensorimotor areas in iridocyclitis. This may provide valuable information about underlying pathogenic mechanisms of iridocyclitis. These findings also indicate that rs-fMRI serves as a potential tool in the disease detection and evaluation of neurologic impairment in iridocyclitis.