Research progress on influencing factors affecting the efficacy of moxibustion in treating knee osteoarthritis.

The article summarizes the relevant factors to the therapeutic effect of moxibustion on knee osteoarthritis, including the origin and storage time of moxa leaves, the time of moxibustion, the numbers of moxa cone, and the temperature when moxibustion is operated. in Qichun county stored for over 3 years is the best regarding its property； and it is recommended for about 40 min in suspended moxibustion； and the heat-sensitive moxibustion is determined when the sensation of moxibustion disappears； and in terms of moxibustion techniques and the numbers of moxa cone, two moxa cones are optimal in warm needling, but the highly applicable duration of moxibustion needs to be confirmed through more high-quality studies. There are few studies on the other influencing factors, such as the specific operation of suspended moxibustion, the angle of knee flexion, treatment sequence, light and smoking factors, moxibustion method and disease staging and type； and the studies are limited in the comparison in terms of the middle-term and long-term efficacy, the comparison of the efficacy among different syndromes of traditional Chinese medicine in patients and the comparison among various frequencies and sessions of treatment.

Gray matter morphological abnormities are constrained by normal structural covariance network in OCD.

A growing body of evidences reveal that abnormal gray matter morphology is constrained by normal brain network architecture in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. However, whether this finding holds true in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) remains unknown. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the association between gray matter morphological abnormities and normal structural covariance network architecture in OCD.

Abnormal voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity in first-episode, drug-naïve patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Prior studies suggest that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can cause both anatomical and functional variations in the brain, but to date, altered functional synchronization between two functional hemispheres remains unclear in OCD patients. Voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) is defined as the temporal correlation of spontaneous low-frequency blood oxygenation level-dependent signal fluctuations across mirror regions of hemisphere revealing the homotopic connectivity between each voxel in one hemisphere and its mirrored counterpart in the contralateral hemisphere. To investigate the alterations of brain regional function and VMHC in patients with OCD, the current study enrolled 103 OCD patients and 118 healthy controls, undergoing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Decreased intrinsic neural timescales in obsessive compulsive disorder and two distinct subtypes revealed by heterogeneity through discriminative analysis.

Background: OCD is featured as the destruction of information storage and processing. The cognition of neurobiological and clinical heterogeneity is in suspense and poorly studied.

Methods: Ninety-nine patients and matched HCs(n = 104) were recruited and underwent resting-state functional MRI scans.

Abnormal resting-state effective connectivity in large-scale networks among obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic mental illness characterized by abnormal functional connectivity among distributed brain regions. Previous studies have primarily focused on undirected functional connectivity and rarely reported from network perspective.

Methods: To better understand between or within-network connectivities of OCD, effective connectivity (EC) of a large-scale network is assessed by spectral dynamic causal modeling with eight key regions of interests from default mode (DMN), salience (SN), frontoparietal (FPN) and cerebellum networks, based on large sample size including 100 OCD patients and 120 healthy controls (HCs).

Mapping the neuroanatomical heterogeneity of OCD using a framework integrating normative model and non-negative matrix factorization.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a spectrum disorder with high interindividual heterogeneity. We propose a comprehensible framework integrating normative model and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to quantitatively estimate the neuroanatomical heterogeneity of OCD from a dimensional perspective. T1-weighted magnetic resonance images of 98 first-episode untreated patients with OCD and matched healthy controls (HCs, n = 130) were acquired.

Identification of shared and distinct patterns of brain network abnormality across mental disorders through individualized structural covariance network analysis.

Background: Mental disorders, including depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia, share a common neuropathy of disturbed large-scale coordinated brain maturation. However, high-interindividual heterogeneity hinders the identification of shared and distinct patterns of brain network abnormalities across mental disorders. This study aimed to identify shared and distinct patterns of altered structural covariance across mental disorders.

Structural and functional deficits and couplings in severe and moderate OCD.

Changes in gray matter volume and functional connections have been frequently observed in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder. However, different grouping may cause diverse volume alterations and could draw more adverse conclusions about the pathophysiology of obsessive compulsive disorder(OCD). Most of them preferred to divide subjects into patients and healthy controls, rather than a detailed subgroup.

White matter microstructural abnormalities and gray matter volume alterations in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A coordinate-based meta-analysis.

Objective: A comprehensive meta-analysis using correlated coordinate data to explore abnormalities in white matter (WM) microarchitecture and changes in gray matter volume (GMV) in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Methods: We reviewed 23 reported studies of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in OCD patients. The differences in WM fractional anisotropy (FA) between OCD patients and healthy controls (HCs) were investigated using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and voxel-based analysis (VBA), respectively, and the results of the two methods were compared.

Altered time-varying local spontaneous brain activity pattern in patients with high myopia: a dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations study.

Purpose: To investigate the abnormal time-varying local spontaneous brain activity in patients with high myopia (HM) on the basis of the dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (dALFF) approach.

Methods: Age and gender matching were performed based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 86 HM patients and 87 healthy controls (HCs). Local spontaneous brain activities were evaluated using the time-varying dALFF method.

Two distinct subtypes of obsessive compulsive disorder revealed by a framework integrating multimodal neuroimaging information.

Patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit tremendous heterogeneity in structural and functional neuroimaging aberrance. However, most previous studies just focus on group-level aberrance of a single modality ignoring heterogeneity and multimodal features. On that account, we aimed to uncover OCD subtypes integrating structural and functional neuroimaging features with the help of a multiview learning method and examined multimodal aberrance for each subtype.

Static and temporal dynamic changes of intrinsic brain activity in pediatric and adults OCD.

Epidemiological and clinical age differences in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been reported in clinical symptoms and morphometry changes; however, age differences in amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and the relationship between ALFF imaging and clinical symptoms has not been thoroughly studied in OCD. Age may be an important feature associated with distinct subtypes of OCD. To examine the effect of age on OCD, the current study enrolled 92 OCD patients (32 pediatrics and 60 adults) and matched HCs (33 pediatrics and 84 adults), undergoing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Altered Coupling of Cerebral Blood Flow and Functional Connectivity Strength in First-Episode Schizophrenia Patients With Auditory Verbal Hallucinations.

Objective: Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are a major symptom of schizophrenia and are connected with impairments in auditory and speech-related networks. In schizophrenia with AVHs, alterations in resting-state cerebral blood flow (CBF) and functional connectivity have been described. However, the neurovascular coupling alterations specific to first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia (FES) patients with AVHs remain unknown.

Resolving heterogeneity in obsessive-compulsive disorder through individualized differential structural covariance network analysis.

Background: The high heterogeneity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) denies attempts of traditional case-control studies to derive neuroimaging biomarkers indicative of precision diagnosis and treatment.

Methods: To handle the heterogeneity, we uncovered subject-level altered structural covariance by adopting individualized differential structural covariance network (IDSCN) analysis. The IDSCN measures how structural covariance edges in a patient deviated from those in matched healthy controls (HCs) yielding subject-level differential edges.

Two distinct subtypes of obsessive compulsive disorder revealed by heterogeneity through discriminative analysis.

Neurobiological heterogeneity in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is understudied leading to conflicting neuroimaging findings. Therefore, we investigated objective neuroanatomical subtypes of OCD by adopting a newly proposed method based on gray matter volumes (GMVs). GMVs were derived from T1-weighted anatomical images of patients with OCD (n = 100) and matched healthy controls (HCs; n = 106).