Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia Is Associated with Altered Brain Volumes and White Matter Microstructure in Preterm Infants

Background: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), an inflammatory disease involving disrupted lung development, is associated with neurodevelopmental outcome in preterm infants.

Objective: This study examined the brain volume and white matter (WM) microstructure in preterm infants at term-equivalent age and explored the effects of BPD on brain development.

Method: We studied 56 preterm infants (33 with BPD and 23 without BPD) with no evidence of focal abnormalities on conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at term-equivalent age. Regional brain volumes and diffusion tensor images were examined using advanced segmentation techniques to acquire quantitative volume measurements, and the JHU neonatal template was used for the atlas-based analysis. We compared these infants with 22 healthy term infants of a similar postmenstrual age.

Results: The preterm infants with BPD had smaller cerebral WM (p = 0.005) volumes than the preterm infants without BPD, independent of sex, gestational age, age at MRI scan, and total intracranial volume. Independent of sex, gestational age, and age at MRI scan, the preterm infants with BPD exhibited marked reductions in fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum (p = 0.006), corticospinal tract (p = 0.003), and superior cerebellar peduncle (p = 0.002) compared with the infants with no BPD, with a significance level of p ≤ 0.008 as a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.

Conclusion: Our study highlights the potential impairing influence of BPD on WM and cerebellar development in preterm infants compared with those without BPD at term-equivalent age, suggesting its clinical significance for neurodevelopment in BPD infants.