ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neuroinfectious Diseases
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1588294
Evaluation of degree centrality and neurological outcomes in patients with herpes simplex encephalitis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shaoxing Central Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Department of emergency medicine, Shaoxing Central Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, zhejaing, China
- 3Infectious Disease Department，The Second People's Hospital of Quzhou,Zhejiang ，Quzhou City,Zhejiang Province 324000，No.338,Xin'an Avenue,Qujiang District,Quzhou City,Zhejiang Province, zhejiang, China
- 4Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
- 5First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
- 6Radiology department, Shaoxing Central Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, 312030, China., Zhejiang, 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: To investigate the association between changes in cerebral degree centrality (DC) and clinical outcomes in patients with herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE).Methods: All participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and DC analysis was used to identify voxels that showed changes in whole-brain functional connectivity with other voxels. DC was evaluated via fMRI graph method and comparisons between HSE and controls were done. National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and modified Rankin Scale (mRS)was assessed for all HSE.Results: Seventy HSE patients and 76 controls were included in our data analysis. HSE showed increased DC values in the right thalamus, left lingual gyrus and right hippocampus while DC value was decreased in the left insula (all p < 0.001). In our HSE cohort, NIHSS was significantly associated with DC changes in the right thalamus (r = -0.282, p = 0.018), left insula (r = -0.301, p = 0.011), left lingual (r = -0.270, p = 0.024) and right hippocampus (r = 0.238, p = 0.047). We also found that DC changes in the right thalamus (r = 0.241, p = 0.044), left insula (r = 0.254, p = 0.034) and left lingual (r = 0.275, p = 0.021) were significantly associated with GCS. After 90 days, neurological deficit assessed via mRS; we found that mRS was associated right thalamus (r = -0.272, p = 0.023) and left lingual (r = -0.270, p = 0.024).: Cerebral intrinsic connectivity changes as assessed by DC in HSE was associated with neurological deficits (assessed by NIHSS), level of consciousness (assessed by GCS) and functional disability. Our findings provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying HSE-related neurological deficits and inform the development of targeted therapeutic interventions.
Keywords: Herpes simplex encephalitis, Degree centrality, Resting-state fMRI, neurological outcome, functional brain connectivity
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Xiaoyu, Zhu, Chen, Yan, Zhang and He. 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: Hongqin He, Radiology department, Shaoxing Central Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, 312030, China., Zhejiang, China
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.