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Sex-specific grey matter abnormalities in individuals with chronic insomnia

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Abstract

Previous studies have reported sex differences in altered brain function in patients with chronic insomnia (CI). However, sex-related alterations in brain morphology have rarely been investigated. This study aimed to investigate sex-specific grey matter (GM) alterations in patients with CI and to examine the relationship between GM alterations and neuropsychological assessments. Ninety-three (65 females and 28 males) patients and 78 healthy (50 females and 28 males) controls were recruited. Structural magnetic resonance imaging data were analysed using voxel-based morphometry to test for interactions between sex and diagnosis. Spearman’s correlation was used to assess the associations among structure, disease duration, and sleep-, mood-, and cognition-related assessments. Males with CI showed reduced GM volume in the left inferior parietal lobe, left middle cingulate cortex, and right supramarginal gyrus. Females with CI showed increased GM volume in the right Rolandic operculum. Moreover, mood-related assessments were negatively correlated with GM volumes in the right supramarginal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobe in the male patients, and cognitive-related assessments were positively correlated with GM volumes in the Rolandic operculum in the female patients. Our findings indicate sex-specific alterations in brain morphology in CI, thereby broadening our understanding of sex differences in CI and potentially providing complementary evidence for the development of more effective therapies and individual treatments.

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Data Availability

The data and material that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data and material are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the patients and volunteers for participating in this study. Also, the authors are highly grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their significant and constructive comments and suggestions, which greatly improve the article.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82001792) and the Science Foundation of Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital (No. 3D-A2021009).

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  1. Jingwen Li and Xinzhi Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear medicine, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, No.466 Road XinGang, Guangzhou, 510317, P. R. China

    Jingwen Li, Xinzhi Wang, Mengchen Liu, Yi Yin, Yunfan Wu & Xiaofen Ma

  2. The Second School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medial University, No. 253 Industrial Avenue Central, Guangzhou, 510260, P. R. China

    Jingwen Li & Xiaofen Ma

  3. Department of Neurology, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, No.466 Road XinGang, Guangzhou, 510317, P. R. China

    Guang Xu

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Contributions

Xiaofen Ma: Conceived and designed the experiments, Performed the experiments, Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. Jingwen Li and Xinzhi Wang: Analyzed the data, Figures, Writing-original draft; Yi Yin and Yunfan Wu: Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. Mengchen Liu and Guang Xu: Performed the experiments.

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Li, ., Wang, X., Liu, M. et al. Sex-specific grey matter abnormalities in individuals with chronic insomnia. Neurol Sci 45, 2301–2310 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-023-07224-7

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