Abnormalities of cortical morphology and structural covariance network in the patients with primary trigeminal neuralgia: a preliminary clinical study.

BACKGROUND

Despite regional brain structural alterations having been reported in the patients with primary trigeminal neuralgia (PTN), the topological characteristics of structural covariance networks (SCNs) still remain unclear. This study applied graph theoretical analysis to investigate the abnormalities of the global and nodal network patterns of SCNs in PTN.

METHODS

Forty-five patients with PTN and 45 matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited in this experiment. All of the participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging examinations and clinical assessment. The cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA) was extracted from 68 brain regions according to the Desikan atlas, and utilized to reconstruct the SCNs. Subsequently, graph theoretical analysis was performed to evaluate the aberrance of topological properties of the SCNs in patient group.

RESULTS

Local cerebral atrophy was observed in scattered brain areas, especially in several frontal and medial parietal cortices in the patients with PTN. Specifically, notable changes of nodal degree, local efficiency and betweenness centrality based on CT and CSA were detected in orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. Network analysis revealed that the patient group showed decreased global efficiency of CT and CSA in varying degrees compared to those of HCs.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings indicated a distinctive pattern of cortical reorganization of CT and CSA based SCNs in PTN, which is beneficial to understand the pathophysiological mechanism at the level of cortical structural network and provide potential targets for induced neuromodulation in this pain disorder.

CLINICAL TRIALS

The registry name of this study in ClinicalTrials.gov: Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on Patients with Trigeminal Neuralgia (MRI-TN).

CLINICALTRIALS

gov ID: NCT02713646. A link to the full application: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=%26;term=NCT02713646%26;cntry=%26;state=%26;city=%26;dist= .