Assisted Reproduction Center, Northwest Women and Children Hospital Affiliated to Xi'an JiaoTong University, Xi'an, China; Department of Andrology, XiYuan Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.
Life Science Research Center, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China; Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
Urology. 2020 Sep;143:159-164. doi: 10.1016/j.urology.2020.06.001. Epub 2020 Jun 13.
To investigate abnormal intrinsic connectivity of striatum in lifelong premature ejaculation (PE) patients compared with healthy controls (HCs).
Forty-seven lifelong PE patients and 30 healthy controls were enrolled in the present study and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The functional connectivity (FC) analysis and 2-sample t tests were applied to investigate the alterations of striatum-related connectivity in patients compared with HCs (significant threshold at P < .05, false discovery rate corrected), and during which Fisher's r-to-z transformation was adopted and the resulting z values were used as the statistical FC values. Correlation analysis was performed to test possible relationships between the imaging findings and clinical characteristics in the patient group (P < .05, Bonferroni correction).
The results showed that compared with HCs, lifelong PE patients had significantly decreased FC between the right caudate and insula, superior temporal pole (STP) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) as well as decreased FC between the bilateral putamen and insula, STP and middle cingulate cortex (MCC). Meanwhile, patients had significantly increased FC between the left caudate and OFC, and increased FC between the right putamen and fusiform. The mean FC value from the caudate-OFC, caudate-insula, and caudate-STP connectivity negatively correlated with the Premature Ejaculation Diagnostic Tool score, separately.
The current study showed the functional abnormality of lifelong PE in multiple brain regions implicated in sensation, motivation, and ejaculation-related inhibitory control, which may improve our understanding of the abnormal striatum-related neural mechanisms in lifelong PE patients.
探讨与健康对照者（HCs）相比，终身早泄（PE）患者纹状体的内在连接异常。
本研究纳入了 47 例终身 PE 患者和 30 名健康对照者，并进行了静息态功能磁共振成像。采用功能连接（FC）分析和两样本 t 检验，以研究与 HCs 相比患者纹状体相关连接的变化（显著阈值为 P <.05，经假发现率校正），并在此过程中采用 Fisher r-to-z 转换，将得到的 z 值用作统计 FC 值。对患者组的影像学发现与临床特征之间可能存在的关系进行相关性分析（P <.05，Bonferroni 校正）。
结果显示，与 HCs 相比，终身 PE 患者右侧尾状核与岛叶、颞上极（STP）和眶额皮质（OFC）之间的 FC 显著降低，双侧壳核与岛叶、STP 和中扣带回（MCC）之间的 FC 也显著降低。同时，患者左侧尾状核与 OFC 之间的 FC 增加，右侧壳核与梭状回之间的 FC 增加。尾状核-OFC、尾状核-岛叶和尾状核-STP 连接的平均 FC 值与早泄诊断工具评分呈负相关。
本研究显示，在多个与感觉、动机和与射精相关的抑制控制相关的脑区，终身 PE 存在功能异常，这可能有助于我们理解终身 PE 患者纹状体相关神经机制的异常。
