For this current project, funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation Investigator Award, her latest study will apply these multimodal imaging techniques to study brain structure, function and development in pSLE patients.2 She will leverage existing normative imaging and cognitive and psychiatric data from typically developing youth in the large Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort to evaluate structural brain injury, calculate a newly developed measure of brain development and examine structure-function relationships between imaging metrics and clinical features of pSLE. Specifically, her study will:
- Quantify the effect of pSLE on brain integrity and function using multimodal neuroimaging (sMRI, DTI and resting state fMRI) in cross-sectional comparison to age- and sex-matched typically developing youth; and
- Correlate cross-sectional, multimodal imaging metrics in pSLE with longitudinal assessment of cognitive and affective function.
“This multimodal study of brain volume and relation to function is a longitudinal project to expand on my preliminary work, and also incorporate cognitive and psychiatric testing to correlate the imaging to brain function,” Dr. Knight says.
Helping Children
Dr. Knight’s interest in pediatric rheumatic disease activity and treatment was fueled early in her career, when she worked with a pediatric patient with NPSLE during medical school. She says this patient inspired her current focus of research and practice, which is at the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry and rheumatology to help these young children battling pSLE during the critical years of their neurodevelopment.
Dr. Knight hopes her research will shed light on the potential inflammatory and non-inflammatory mechanisms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction in lupus to inform early detection through advanced imaging and biomarkers, which are less-invasive evaluations for neuropsychiatric disorders in pSLE patients.
She notes, “Knowing these mechanisms would further the development of more targeted and tailored therapies to individual patients with specific neuropsychiatric syndromes.”
Carina Stanton is a freelance science journalist in Denver.
References
- Knight A, Vickery M, Doshi J, et al. Regional Brain Gray Matter Volume Loss in Children and Adolescents with SLE [abstract]. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2016; 68(suppl 10).
- Rheumatology Research Foundation. 2017 award receipients: Advancing treatment and finding cures. 2017:21.
