About half of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) adults suffer from a chronic pain syndrome. What of the SCD brain contributes to the development and maintenance of the pain syndrome is unknown. We used resting state functional connectivity MRI (rfcMRI) technique, found significant differences between SCD and controls in areas known to contribute to the development and maintenance of a chronic pain syndrome, and the differences have significant associations with the pain phenotype measurements. The findings suggest that rfcMRI could be used as a biomarker to determine the efficacy of interventions targeted to chronic pain in SCD patients.
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