Nutritive sucking abnormalities and brain microstructural abnormalities in infants with established brain injury: a pilot study

Objective: To determine the relationship between nutritive sucking and microstructural integrity of sensorimotor tracts in newborns with brain injury. Study design: Diffusion imaging was performed in ten newborns with brain injury. Nutritive sucking was assessed using Nfant®. The motor, sensory, and corpus callosum tracts were reconstructed via tractography. Fractional anisotropy, radial, axial, and mean diffusivity were estimated for these tracts. Multiple regression models were developed to test the association between sucking features and diffusion parameters. Results: Low-sucking smoothness correlated with low-fractional anisotropy of motor tracts (p = 0.0096). High-sucking irregularity correlated with high-mean diffusivity of motor (p = 0.030) and corpus callosum tracts (p = 0.032). For sensory tracts, high-sucking irregularity (p = 0.018) and low-smoothness variability (p = 0.002) correlated with high-mean diffusivity. Interpretation: We show a correlation between neuroimaging-demonstrated microstructural brain abnormalities and variations in sucking patterns of newborns. The consistency of this relationship should be shown on larger cohorts.