Background: The pathophysiology of patients with dry eye disease (DED) is associated with abnormal functional connectivity (FC). The present study aims to probe alterations of voxel-wise brain-wide FC in patient with DED at rest in an unbiased way. Method: A total of 20 patients with DED and 23 controls matched by age, sex, and years of education underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. Global-brain FC (GFC) was adopted to analyze the images. Support vector machine (SVM) was utilized to differentiate the patients from the controls. Results: Compared with the controls, patients with DED exhibited decreased GFC in the right cerebellum lobule VIII/inferior semi-lunar lobule and left thalamus that belonged to the cerebello-thalamo-cortical network. The GFC values in the left thalamus were positively correlated to the illness duration (r = 0.589, p = 0.006) in the patients. Decreased GFC values in the left thalamus could be used to discriminate the patients from the controls with optimal accuracy, sensitivity and specificity (88.37, 85.00, and 91.30%). Conclusions: Our findings indicate that decreased GFC in the brain regions associated with cerebello-thalamo-cortical network may provide a new insight for understanding the pathological changes of FC in DED. GFC values in the left thalamus may be utilized as a potential biomarker to identify the patients from the controls.

中文翻译：

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干眼病患者小脑-丘脑-皮质网络的全局-大脑功能连通性降低

背景：干眼病（DED）患者的病理生理与功能连接异常（FC）有关。本研究旨在以无偏见的方式探讨静息状态下 DED 患者的体素全脑 FC 的变化。方法：共有 20 名 DED 患者和 23 名对照年龄、性别和受教育年限相匹配的患者接受了静息态功能磁共振成像扫描。采用全局大脑 FC (GFC) 来分析图像。支持向量机 (SVM) 用于区分患者与对照组。结果：与对照组相比，DED 患者右侧小脑 VIII/下半月小叶和左侧丘脑（属于小脑 - 丘脑 - 皮质网络）的 GFC 降低。左侧丘脑的 GFC 值与患者的病程（r = 0.589，p = 0.006）呈正相关。左侧丘脑中 GFC 值的降低可用于以最佳的准确性、敏感性和特异性（88.37、85.00 和 91.30%）将患者与对照组区分开来。结论：我们的研究结果表明，与小脑 - 丘脑 - 皮质网络相关的大脑区域中 GFC 的减少可能为理解 DED 中 FC 的病理变化提供新的见解。左侧丘脑中的 GFC 值可用作潜在的生物标志物，以从对照中识别患者。和 91.30%）。结论：我们的研究结果表明，与小脑 - 丘脑 - 皮质网络相关的大脑区域中 GFC 的减少可能为理解 DED 中 FC 的病理变化提供新的见解。左侧丘脑中的 GFC 值可用作潜在的生物标志物，以从对照中识别患者。和 91.30%）。结论：我们的研究结果表明，与小脑 - 丘脑 - 皮质网络相关的大脑区域中 GFC 的减少可能为理解 DED 中 FC 的病理变化提供新的见解。左侧丘脑中的 GFC 值可用作潜在的生物标志物，以从对照中识别患者。