Abstract
Components of metabolic syndrome might be predictors of the therapeutic outcome of psychiatric symptom in schizophrenia, whereas clinical results are inconsistent and an intrinsic therapeutic link between weaker psychiatric symptoms and emergent metabolic syndrome remains unclear. This study aims to reveal the relationship and illustrate potential mechanism by exploring the alteration of cerebellar functional connectivity (FC) in schizophrenia patients with comorbidity metabolic syndrome. Thirty-six schizophrenia patients with comorbidity of metabolic syndrome (SCZ-MetS), 45 schizophrenia patients without metabolic syndrome (SCZ-nMetS) and 39 healthy controls (HC) were recruited in this study. We constructed FC map of cerebello-cortical circuit and used moderation effect analysis to reveal complicated relationship among FC, psychiatric symptom and metabolic disturbance. Components of metabolic syndrome were significantly correlated with positive symptom score and negative symptom score. Importantly, the dysconnectivity between cognitive module of cerebellum and left middle frontal gyrus in SCZ-nMetS was recuperative increased in SCZ-MetS, and was significantly correlated with general symptom score. Finally, we observed significant moderation effect of body mass index on this correlation. The present findings further supported the potential relationship between emergence of metabolic syndrome and weaker psychiatric symptom, and provided neuroimaging evidence. The mechanism of intrinsic therapeutic link involved functional change of cerebello-cortical circuit.