Altered intrinsic regional brain activity in female asthmatics with or without depressive symptoms: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Background: Previous studies have suggested that asthma patients are more susceptible to anxiety or depression and have more specifically elevated depressive symptomology. These psychological factors are associated with anatomical brain changes. However, little is known about alterations in spontaneous brain activity in asthma patients with depressive symptoms. Here we hypothesized that asthma patients exhibit an altered regional spontaneous brain activity, which may contribute to their increased susceptibility to depression and poor perception of asthma symptoms. The purpose of this study was to examine spontaneous brain activity in female asthma patients using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Methods: Eleven asthmatics without depressive symptoms (ASs), 14 asthmatics with depressive symptoms (ADs), and 15 age-and education-matched healthy controls (HCs) completed rs-fMRI. The regional homogeneity (ReHo) value was calculated based on rs-fMRI to assess local signal synchrony strength and compared among the groups. Correlation analyses were conducted between both ReHo values and clinical parameters. Result: Compared with HCs, ASs showed a significantly increased ReHo in the right insula; whereas ADs showed a significantly decreased ReHo in the right insula, which positively correlated with nocturnal symptom score in the Asthma Control Test (r = 0.562, P = 0.036). No significant correlation was observed between the total ACT scores and right insula activities (r = 0.263, P = 0.364). Conclusion: Decreased ReHo in the right insula may play an important role in depressive symptoms and abnormal asthma symptom perception.