Patients with sickle-cell disease exhibit greater functional connectivity and centrality in the locus coeruleus compared to anemic controls

Neuroimage Clin. 2019:21:101686. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101686. Epub 2019 Jan 22.

¹ UCLA Pediatric Pain and Palliative Care Program, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Electronic address: ravibhatt@mednet.ucla.edu.
² UCLA Pediatric Pain and Palliative Care Program, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
³ Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Department of Radiology, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Department of Cardiology, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁴ Childrens Center for Cancer, Blood Disease and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CCCBD), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁵ Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience, Department of Medicine, Vatche and Tamar Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Abstract

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Patients with sickle-cell disease (SCD) have greater resting-state functional connectivity between the locus coeruleus (LC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC).
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Patients with SCD have greater resting state centrality of the LC
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SCD patients with chronic pain exhibited even greater functional connectivity between the LC and dlPFC.
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This study supports hyper-connectivity between the LC and PFC is a potential chronic pain generator.