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Abnormal degree centrality in lifelong premature ejaculation patients: an fMRI study

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Abstract

Lifelong premature ejaculation (PE) is one of the most prevalent male sexual dysfunctions. It is still not well known about the possible neural mechanisms of lifelong PE. This study tried to investigate the abnormal characteristics of brain functional networks of lifelong PE and to assess relationships of PE-related functional abnormalities with clinical symptoms. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and clinical symptoms were collected from 45 lifelong PE patients and 37 healthy controls (HCs) since 2016, including disease and sexual life history, intravaginal ejaculatory latency time measured by stopwatch and other scales. The degree centrality (DC) approach were applied to distinguish altered brain functions between the two groups (p < 0.05, false discovery rate corrected). Correlation analysis was then performed to examine relationships between the imaging findings and clinical symptoms (p < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected). Results showed that compared with HCs, lifelong PE patients had increased DC value in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), precuneus and primary somatosensory cortex (SI) as well as decreased DC value in the insula and orbitofrontal cortex. After controlling for anxiety and depression levels, the significant difference in the mPFC was not found. The DC value in the SI positively correlated with premature ejaculation diagnostic tool (PEDT) score in the patients. The present findings indicate that lifelong PE patients have altered DC in brain regions involved in sensation, motivation and inhibitory control processing. Our study may improve our understanding and provide a new sight into the further research of lifelong PE.

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Funding

This study was financially supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant (No.2019 M650985), Development Funds of Shaanxi Science and Technology Agency of China (No. 2018SF/091), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81,603,631, 81,771,918) and Shaanxi Health and Family Planning Commission Foundation of China for Youths (No. 2016E04).

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  1. Ming Gao, Nana Feng and Xiang Liu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Andrology, Xiyuan Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ming Gao & Jun Guo

  2. Assisted Reproduction Center, Northwest Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Xi’an, China

    Ming Gao, Xiang Liu & Jianhua Sun

  3. Life Sciences Research Center, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an, China

    Nana Feng, Jiayu Wu, Mengmeng Huang & Peng Liu

  4. Engineering Research Center of Molecular and NeuroImaging, Ministry of Education, Xi’an, China

    Nana Feng, Jiayu Wu, Mengmeng Huang & Peng Liu

  5. Department of Urology, Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China

    Guangdong Hou, Lei Zhang & Jianlin Yuan

  6. Department of Radiology, Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China

    Hong Yin

  7. Department of Urology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Beijing, China

    Boda Guo

  8. Graduate School of Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China

    Boda Guo

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  1. Ming Gao
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  2. Nana Feng
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  3. Xiang Liu
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  4. Jianhua Sun
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  9. Jiayu Wu
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  11. Jianlin Yuan
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  12. Jun Guo
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  13. Peng Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jun Guo or Peng Liu.

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The Northwest Women’s and Children’s Hospital in China approved all research procedures of the current study, which were in accordance with the the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki).

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Gao, M., Feng, N., Liu, X. et al. Abnormal degree centrality in lifelong premature ejaculation patients: an fMRI study. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 1412–1419 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00340-4

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