Glymphatic system abnormality in systemic lupus erythematosus identified by diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space

DTI-ALPS is an non-invasive method to measure glymphatic clearance function in brain. Here, we aimed to utilize DTI-ALPS to evaluate the activity of glymphatic system and explore its relationship with grey matter volumes in patients with SLE. Our results demonstrated that the ALPS-index are lower in SLE patients than that in healthy control group. And there were significant correlations between lower ALPS-index and smaller gray matter volumes in some brain regions in SLE group.