Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Sep 2022)

The functional connectivity of the basal ganglia subregions changed in mid-aged and young males with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome

  • Xi Lan,
  • Xi Lan,
  • Xuan Niu,
  • Wei-Xian Bai,
  • Hai-Ning Li,
  • Xin-Yi Zhu,
  • Wen-Jun Ma,
  • Jian-Long Li,
  • Wang-Huan Dun,
  • Ming Zhang,
  • Ming Zhang,
  • Juan He

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.1013425
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16

Abstract

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BackgroundThe Basal ganglia (BG) played a crucial role in the brain-level mechanisms of chronic pain disorders. However, the functional changes of BG in chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) are still poorly understood. This study investigated the BG subregions’ resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in CP/CPPS patients compared with healthy controls.MethodsTwenty eight patients with CP/CPPS and 28 age- and education-matched healthy males underwent clinical measurements and 3T brain MR imaging, including T1-weighted structural images and resting-state functional imaging. The data were analyzed by the seeded-based rs-FC analysis. Then, a machine learning method was applied to assess the feasibility of detecting CP/CPPS patients through the changed rs-FC.ResultsCompared with healthy males, patients presented decreased rs-FC between the BG subregions and right middle cingulate cortex, and correlated with pain (r = 0.51, p-uncorrected = 0.005) and urinary symptoms (r = –0.4, p-uncorrected = 0.034). The left superior temporal gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus showed decreased rs-FC with the BG subregions as well. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.943 (accuracy = 80%, F1-score = 80.6%) was achieved for the classification of CP/CPPS patients and healthy males with support vector machine (SVM) based on the changed rs-FC.ConclusionThese findings provide evidence of altered BG subregions’ rs-FC in CP/CPPS, which may contribute to our understanding of the BG’s role in CP/CPPS.

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