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Ya-Jun Wu,1,* Jie Rao,1,* Xin Huang,2 Na Wu,1 Ling Shi,1 Hui Huang,1 Si-Yu Li,1 Xiao-Lin Chen,1 Shui-Qin Huang,1 Pei-Pei Zhong,1 Xiao-Rong Wu,1 Jun Wang3 1Department of Ophthalmology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Ophthalmology, Jiangxi Provincial People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Respiratory Disease, Jiangxi Provincial People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jun Wang Email wangjun5087@163.comPurpose: Converging evidence demonstrated that bronchial asthma (BA) individuals with hypoxia were associated with functional and morphological reorganization in the brain. However, the alterations of the interhemispheric functional connectivity in BA individuals remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the interhemispheric functional connectivity changes in individuals with hypoxia due to middle-aged BA using voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) methods.Methods: In total, 31 BA individuals and 30 healthy controls (HCs) closely matched in age, sex, and education underwent resting-state magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. VMHC analysis was performed to investigate differences in interhemispheric functional connectivity between the two groups. Then, a seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis was conducted to further reveal the abnormal functional connectivity between the altered VMHC regions and the whole brain.Results: Compared with HCs, BA individuals had significantly lower VMHC values in the bilateral basal ganglia/thalamus/insula, cuneus/calcarine/lingual gyrus, precentral and postcentral gyrus. [voxel level P < 0.01, Gaussian random field (GRF) correction, cluster level P < 0.05]. Taking VMHC altered brain areas as seed points, the rsFC values of left insula/supramarginal/postcentral gyrus (PostCG)/inferior parietal lobule (IPL) brain areas in BA were increased.Conclusion: The abnormal resting-state functional connectivity of middle-aged BA is altered in specific brain regions related to the basal ganglia network, visual network, and sensorimotor network, which may be related to the neuropathogenesis of asthma patients. Furthermore, these VMHC and FC values may be important clinical indicators for the diagnosis and treatment of asthma patients.Keywords: bronchial asthma, voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity, functional magnetic resonance imaging, basal ganglia network, visual network, sensorimotor network |
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