Bai Jie, Wen Hongwei, Tai Jun, Peng Yun, Li Hongbin, Mei Lin, Ji Tingting, Li Xiaodan, Li Yanhua, Ni Xin, Liu Yue
Department of Radiology, Beijing Children's Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Center for Children's Health, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.
Front Neurosci. 2021 Nov 15;15:595412. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.595412. eCollection 2021.
Childhood obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common chronic sleep-related breathing disorder in children, which leads to growth retardation, neurocognitive impairments, and serious complications. Considering the previous studies about brain structural abnormalities in OSA, in the present study, we aimed to explore the altered spontaneous brain activity among OSA patients, using amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), fractional ALFF (fALFF), and regional homogeneity (ReHo) methods based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Thirty-one untreated OSA children and 33 age-and gender-matched healthy children (HC) were included in this study. Compared with controls, the OSA group showed significant lower ALFF in the right lingual gyrus, decreased fALFF in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), but increased fALFF in the left precuneus. Decreased ReHo was found in the left inferior frontal gyrus (orbital part) and left middle frontal gyrus. Notably, the mean fALFF value of left MFG was not only significantly related to multiple sleep parameters but also demonstrated the best performance in ROC curve analysis. These findings revealed OSA children were associated with dysfunctions in the default mode network, the frontal lobe, and the lingual gyrus, which may implicate the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of intrinsic brain activity. The correlation between the altered spontaneous neuronal activity and the clinical index provides early useful diagnostic biomarkers for OSA children as well.
儿童阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停（OSA）是一种常见的儿童慢性睡眠相关呼吸障碍，可导致生长发育迟缓、神经认知障碍及严重并发症。鉴于先前关于OSA患者脑结构异常的研究，在本研究中，我们旨在基于静息态功能磁共振成像（MRI），采用低频振幅（ALFF）、分数低频振幅（fALFF）和局部一致性（ReHo）方法，探究OSA患者自发脑活动的改变情况。本研究纳入了31名未经治疗的OSA儿童和33名年龄及性别匹配的健康儿童（HC）。与对照组相比，OSA组右侧舌回的ALFF显著降低，左侧额中回（MFG）的fALFF降低，而左侧楔前叶的fALFF升高。左侧额下回（眶部）和左侧额中回的ReHo降低。值得注意的是，左侧MFG的平均fALFF值不仅与多个睡眠参数显著相关，而且在ROC曲线分析中表现最佳。这些发现揭示了OSA儿童与默认模式网络、额叶及舌回功能障碍有关，这可能暗示了内在脑活动的潜在神经生理机制。自发神经元活动改变与临床指标之间的相关性也为OSA儿童提供了早期有用的诊断生物标志物。
