Increased Glymphatic System Activity and Hypothalamic Connectivity in Patients With Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is an emotional disorder impacting mood and sleep.
• Neuroimaging studies have explored PMDD's neurobiology, but the glymphatic system and hypothalamus connectivity roles are unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate glymphatic system function in PMDD.
• Examine hypothalamus-related functional connectivity (FC) abnormalities in PMDD patients.

Main Methods:

• Used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MRI on 23 PMDD patients and 27 healthy controls.
• Assessed glymphatic function via DTI along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) indices.
• Analyzed hypothalamus-related FC and used machine learning for classification.

Main Results:

• PMDD patients had higher left DTI-ALPS indices compared to controls.
• Increased hypothalamus connectivity was observed with multiple brain regions in PMDD patients.
• Hypothalamus-related FC effectively differentiated PMDD patients from controls.

Conclusions:

• Elevated glymphatic activity and hypothalamus FC may underlie heightened emotional reactivity in PMDD.
• Brain regions in the emotional network showed discriminative features between PMDD patients and controls.
• Findings suggest potential neurobiological markers for PMDD.