Unaltered intrinsic functional brain architecture in young women with primary dysmenorrhea

Abstract

Primary dysmenorrhea (PDM), painful menstruation without organic causes, is the most prevalent gynecological problem in women of reproductive age. Dysmenorrhea later in life often co-occurs with many chronic functional pain disorders, and chronic functional pain disorders exhibit altered large-scale connectedness between distributed brain regions. It is unknown whether the young PDM females exhibit alterations in the global and local connectivity properties of brain functional networks. Fifty-seven otherwise healthy young PDM females and 62 age- and education-matched control females participated in the present resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study. We used graph theoretical network analysis to investigate the global and regional network metrics and modular structure of the resting-state brain functional networks in young PDM females. The functional network was constructed by the interregional functional connectivity among parcellated brain regions. The global and regional network metrics and modular structure of the resting-state brain functional networks were not altered in young PDM females at our detection threshold (medium to large effect size differences [Cohen’s d ≥ 0.52]). It is plausible that the absence of significant changes in the intrinsic functional brain architecture allows young PDM females to maintain normal psychosocial outcomes during the pain-free follicular phase.

Neuroprotective effect of Val variant of BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on hippocampus is modulated by the severity of menstrual pain

“…Taken together, this is an indication that the brief nature of cyclic PDM episodes would not necessarily prompt global structural changes in the hippocampus. This assertion is corroborated by evidence in a previous study clearly demonstrating that the absence of significant changes in intrinsic functional brain architecture allow young PDM females to maintain normal psychosocial outcomes during the pain-free periovulatory phase ( Lee et al, 2018 ). Pain disorders vary in terms of underlying nature and pain characteristics; therefore, our findings cannot be extrapolated to other chronic functional pain disorders, regardless of whether they are sustained or occur irregularly over longer periods of time.…”

“…Planned contrasts pose specific questions as opposed to the null vs. alternative hypotheses of conventional ANOVA ( Seltman, 2018 ). They are commonly used in functional neuroimaging studies to detect subtle but potentially significant neuroscientific findings ( Lee et al, 2018 , Pazmany et al, 2017 , Wu et al, 2016 ). A stringent threshold of p < 0.05 with FWE correction was applied.…”

Effects of repeated menstrual pain on empathic neural responses in women with primary dysmenorrhea across the menstrual cycle

“…Long‐term menstrual pain not only induces chronic pelvic pain (Berkley, 2013; Lee et al, 2018), it may also lead to maladaptive neuroplasticity of the brain (Katy et al, 2011), which may further affect women's emotions, cognition, and their psychological modulation (V. A. Apkarian et al, 2004; Bajaj, Bajaj, Madsen, & Arendt‐Nielsen, 2002; Kim et al, 2014; Rhudy & Bartley, 2010; Tu et al, 2013; Von Deneen et al, 2019). Previously, Preis et al (2013) reported that prior pain experience could lead to a higher level of empathy (Preis et al, 2013).…”

Dynamic network topological properties for classifying primary dysmenorrhoea in the pain‐free phase

“…For example altered topological properties have been reported in chronic pain disorders (Hashmi et al, 2014;Li et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2012). However, only Lee et al (2018) have used the graph-theory method to construct static functional network architecture to investigate global and nodal network properties in PDM, but they reported no significant changes. It is well-known that the brain is a complex system that processes dynamic information.…”