ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Integr. Neurosci.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnint.2025.1506742
Abnormal amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and functional connectivity of the patients with primary dysmenorrhea (PD)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Affiliated Hospital, Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Ningbo First Hospital, Ningbo, China
- 3Ningbo Women and Children’s Hospital, Ningbo, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: Utilizing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), this study aimed to investigate changes in the spontaneous activity of the default mode network (DMN) in patients with primary dysmenorrhea (PD) through amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and functional connectivity (FC) analyses, and to explore their relationship with emotion. Methods: A total of 14 PD patients (PD group) and 24 age-, education-, and gender-matched healthy controls (HC group) underwent rs-fMRI scans. First, ALFF changes were calculated in the PD group compared to the HC group, and brain regions with ALFF differences were used as regions of interest (ROIs). Subsequently, rs-fMRI was employed to detect differences in FC intensity between groups. Nine PD subjects completed neuropsychological scale assessments, and correlations with ALFF and FC values were calculated. Results: Compared to the HC group, the PD group exhibited decreased ALFF in the middle temporal gyrus, temporal pole, and superior temporal gyrus on the left side. Using the temporal pole as the ROI, the PD group also showed decreased connectivity between the temporal pole and the superior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral supplementary motor area, and precentral gyrus on the right side. A tendency towards a positive correlation between ALFF values and anxiety was observed. Conclusion: PD patients exhibit multidimensional functional changes in the brain. ALFF and FC may serve as sensitive biomarkers for distinguishing PD patients from healthy individuals.
Keywords: Primary dysmenorrhea, resting-state, functional magnetic resonanceimaging, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), functionalconnectivity (FC)
Received: 06 Oct 2024; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Xu, Hu, Pan and Wang. 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: Xiaorong Wang, smile_00566@sina.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.