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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Translational Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1511654
The Characteristics of Brain Functional Alterations in the Patients of Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome with Symptom Severity Evaluated by NIH-CPSI
Provisionally accepted
Shengyang Ge 1* Yunting Xiang 2*
Xu-Yun Hua 2 Zening Wang 1*
Qingfeng Hu 3 Yijun Guo 4* Jingqiang Huang 3* Chengpeng Zhao 3*
Jia-Jia Wu 2* Xianli Wang 5*
Chuanyu Sun 3*- 1 Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
- 2 Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
- 3 Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- 4 Shanghai Fourth People's Hospital, Shanghai, China
- 5 School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
Background: Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) is a prevalent condition in urology characterized by chronic pain. The pathogenesis of CP/CPPS remains unclear.We enrolled 45 eligible CP/CPPS patients and 45 healthy volunteers. We evaluated their resting-state fMRI data using a comprehensive set of parameters, such as Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) and Degree Centrality (DC), to detect brain abnormalities and identify potential correlates with the clinical manifestations of CP/CPPS. We further categorized the patients into subgroups according to their scores of NIH-CPSI to elucidate the brain changes associated with differing symptom severities.: Profound alterations in brain function were observed in patients with CP/CPPS. These changes involved multiple brain regions identified by DC analysis, including the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), left inferior frontal opercular cortex, left amygdala, right middle frontal cortex, and bilateral insula. ReHo analysis revealed significant changes in the right thalamus, left inferior frontal triangular cortex, right superior temporal pole, left ACC, and right superior frontal cortex (cluster > 20 voxels, GRF correction, p < 0.05). Analysis using ReHo and DC revealed that brain alterations associated with varying symptom severities were localized in pain perception and modulation regions. Specifically, the DC values in the right ACC showed a linear correlation with the severity of symptoms measured by the NIH-CPSI (AUC = 0.9654, p < 0.0001).In CP/CPPS, we first discovered differences in brain function among patients with varying degrees of severity. The brain alterations of DC in the right ACC might be a potential biomarker for diagnosing and assessing disease severity.
Keywords: CP/CPPS, fMRI, NIH-CPSI, hierarchical clustering, Chronic Pain
Received: 17 Oct 2024; Accepted: 04 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ge, Xiang, Hua, Wang, Hu, Guo, Huang, Zhao, Wu, Wang and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Shengyang Ge, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, Shanghai Municipality, China
Yunting Xiang, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, 200437, China
Zening Wang, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, Shanghai Municipality, China
Yijun Guo, Shanghai Fourth People's Hospital, Shanghai, China
Jingqiang Huang, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Chengpeng Zhao, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Jia-Jia Wu, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, 200437, China
Xianli Wang, School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
Chuanyu Sun, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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