A Study Of Primary Dysmenorrhea Based On ALFF And ICA

Primary dysmenorrhea, also known as functional menstrual pain, is caused by non-organic disease and endocrine disorders, frequently occurring within 6 to 24 months of menarche, manifested as lower abdominal pain, often accompanied by nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, dizziness, fatigue and other symptoms. Epidemiology studies show that primary dysmenorrhea is one of the most common gynecological diseases, seriously affecting the normal work and life of women. The incidence was 20% to 90%. Primary dysmenorrhea has become a common health problem around the world. National sample survey shows that incidence of dysmenorrhea of women in China is 33.19%, 53.2% belong to primary dysmenorrhea. 13.55% are affected seriously by this disease. A US survey shows that absenteeism of women workers caused by dysmenorrhea is between 34% to 50%. About 10% of patients with primary dysmenorrhea can’t go to work for 1 to 3 days every month, which leads to economic losses up to $2 billion annually. High incidence and severe harm of primary dysmenorrhea already caused more and more attention home and abroad. Although its cause is unknown, but some recent studies suggest that the main factors include uterus factors, endocrine factors, pain sensitization, nerve and neurotransmitter factors, psychological factors and so on.Brain imaging technology especially the development of rs-f MRI technology makes it possible to understand the disease deeply and provides the possibility of further study of pathophysiological mechanism. The study enrolled 42 patients with primary menstrual pain and 30 normal subjects. First, we test the difference of the low-frequency fluctuation amplitude(ALFF) of the whole brain between the two groups. The significant activation or deactivation regions mainly include bilateral orbitofrontal cortex, middle cingulate cortex, right angular gyrus, the left parahippocampal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus and bilateral inferior temporal gyrus. However, studies have shown that the difference of low-frequency amplitude between the groups may also be frequency-dependent. To further clarify this issue, we calculate the ALFF of slow-5(0.01-0.027Hz) and slow-4(0.027-0.073Hz) and do ANOVA(analysis of variance) analysis. It was found that compared to slow-4, the activation regions of slow-4 are mainly composed of the medial prefrontal cortex(m PFC), dorsolateralprefrontal cortex(dl PFC), anterior cingulate cortex(ACC), temporal lobe, insula, lingual gyrus and other cortical regions while the deactivation regions concentrate in the hippocampus, thalamus and other subcortical areas.Independent component analysis(ICA) is a data-driven blind source separation method, which has been widely used in the separation of functional network of the brain. In this thesis, ICA is successfully adopted to obtain ten brain functional networks. By comparing these networks between groups, we find four networks that have significant differences including the default-mode network, the salience network, the sensorimotor network and basal ganglia network. All of these studies indicate the dysfunction of primary dysmenorrhea patients.