Disrupted Functional Brain Network Topology in Etomidate Misuse.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Addiction Research
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• Etomidate misuse (EM) is a growing public health issue in East and Southeast Asia.
• Neurobiological underpinnings of EM are poorly understood.
• Disruptions in brain network organization are common in substance use disorders (SUDs), but EM's impact is unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the brain network topology in individuals with etomidate misuse.
• To characterize global and nodal properties of functional brain networks in EM.
• To explore associations between network metrics and clinical characteristics of EM.

Main Methods:

• Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was used.
• Graph theoretical analyses were applied to assess network topology.
• Support Vector Machine (SVM) was used for classification.

Main Results:

• Global network organization was largely preserved, with a reduced clustering coefficient.
• Nodal network properties showed significant alterations in degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and nodal efficiency.
• SVM achieved moderate classification performance (66.7% accuracy, AUC=0.711).

Conclusions:

• This study is the first to systematically examine brain network topology in etomidate misuse.
• Findings reveal widespread nodal alterations with preserved global organization.
• Clinical relevance requires further investigation.