Abnormal cerebral micro-structures in end-stage renal disease patients related to mild cognitive impairment

This study aimed to investigate the abnormal cerebral micro-structures related to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and further predict individual cognitive function in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. Specially, diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI), mediation analysis, and the least squares support vector regression machine (LSSVRM) were utilized to conduct our study. We observed that aberrant micro-structures partially mediated the association between clinical risk factors and MCI, which is a novel insight into the progression of cognitive dysfunction. The combination of DKI metrics and clinical characteristics could be used as features to efficiently predict cognitive function associated with ESRD.