Discussion
neurological diseases
NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE, RECRUITMENT, IRON DEPOSITION
There is a lack of human studies to examine the relationship between brain iron deposition and BBB function during childhood. The present study directly compared both physiological systems along the developmental trajectory using QSM and DP-pCASL in pediatric brains. We quantified the rate of change for brain iron deposition as the Δsusceptibility value and the water exchange rate across the BBB as the Regional heterogeneities of the interaction between brain iron dynamics and BBB function supported a concept of organized BBB functionality during normal brain development. For many years, it was believed that iron entered the brain tissue intensively during the fetal and neonatal periods before the BBB matured [To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to present quantitative values of the water exchange rate across the BBB for pediatric brains. Our results of The reason that the scattergrams between the Δsusceptibility and Our study had several limitations. First, the MRI scans were obtained based on clinical indications, and QSM and DP-pCASL sequences were add-on protocols. This included the following two disadvantages: (1) the recruitment inevitably had a selection bias and further follow-up examinations beyond December 2022 may have revealed additional participants with neurological diseases. Therefore, we could not establish normative quantitative MRI measures such as In conclusion, the combined quantitative MRI study of QSM and DP-pCASL for pediatric brains demonstrated the relationship between brain iron dynamics and BBB function during childhood, highlighting the potential of these imaging techniques to assess both physiological systems during postnatal brain development.