Altered Density of Resting-State Long- and Short-Range Functional Connectivity in Patients with Moderate-to-Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Yumeng Liu; Huizhen Xin; Yongqiang Shu; Lifeng Li; Ting Long; Li Zeng; Ling Huang; Xiang Liu; Yingke Deng; Yu Zhu; Haijun Li; Dechang Peng

doi:10.2147/NSS.S483030

Altered Density of Resting-State Long- and Short-Range Functional Connectivity in Patients with Moderate-to-Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Nat Sci Sleep. 2024 Dec 4:16:1891-1904. doi: 10.2147/NSS.S483030. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Yumeng Liu¹, Huizhen Xin¹, Yongqiang Shu^{1

2}, Lifeng Li¹, Ting Long¹, Li Zeng¹, Ling Huang¹, Xiang Liu¹, Yingke Deng¹, Yu Zhu¹, Haijun Li^{1

2}, Dechang Peng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jiangxi Medical College, Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China.
² PET Center, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jiangxi Medical College, Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Purpose: This study is to evaluate the altered number of functional connection (s) in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) by functional connectivity density (FCD), to investigate its relationship with cognitive function, and to explore whether these features could be used to distinguish OSA from healthy controls (HCs).

Methods: Seventy-six OSA patients and 72 HCs were included in the analysis. All participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Subsequently, intergroup differences between long-and short-range FCD groups were obtained in the Matlab platform by using the degree centrality option with a 75 mm cutoff. The partial correlation analysis were used to assess the relationship between the altered FCD value and clinical assessments in OSA patients. The FCD values of the different brain regions were used as classification features to distinguish the two groups by support vector machine (SVM).

Results: Compared to HCs, OSA patients had decreased long-range FCD in the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), right precuneus, and left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Simultaneously, increased long-range FCD in the right cingulate gyrus (CG). Meanwhile, the short-range FCD were decreased in the right postcentral gyrus (PoCG), right SFG, left MFG, and right CG. The short-range FCD values of the right PoCG were correlated with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores in OSA patients. SVM analysis showed that FCD in differential brain regions could differentiate OSA patients from HCs.

Conclusion: Long- and short-range FCD values in different brain regions of OSA patients may be related to cognitive decline, and also be effective in distinguishing OSA patients from HCs. These findings provide new perspectives on neurocognition in OSA patients.

Keywords: cognitive function; functional connectivity density; functional magnetic resonance imaging; obstructive sleep apnea.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81860307), the Key Research and Development Program of Jiangxi Province (Grant No. 20243BBI91031), Natural Science Foundation Project of Jiangxi Province, China (Grant No. 20181ACB20023), Science and Technology Project of Jiangxi Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Grant No. 2023A0278), Education Department Project of Jiangxi Province, China (Grant No GJJ190133), Department of Health Project of Jiangxi Province, China (Grant No 202210211), and Clinical Research Center for Medical Imaging in Jiangxi Province (No. 20223BCG74001).