1Department of Neurology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
2Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
3Huaxi MR Researche Center,Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
*These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract 

Tension-type headache (TTH) is the most prevalent type of primary headache. Many studies have shown that the pathogenesis of primary headache is associated with fine structural or functional changes. However, these studies were mainly based on migraine. The present study aimed to investigate whether TTH patients show functional disturbances compared with healthy subjects. We used restingstate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis to identify changes in the local synchronization of spontaneous activity in patients with TTH. Ten patients with TTH and 10 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls participated in the study. After demographic and clinical characteristics were acquired, a 3.0-T MRI system was used to obtain resting-state fMRIs. Compared with healthy controls, the TTH group exhibited significantly lower ReHo values in the bilateral caudate nucleus, the precuneus, the putamen, the left middle frontal gyrus, and the superior frontal gyrus. There was no correlation between mean ReHo values in TTH patients and duration of TTH, number of attacks, duration of daily attacks, Visual Analogue Scale score, or Headache Impact Test-6 score. These results suggest that TTH patients exhibit reduced synchronization of neuronal activity in multiple regions involved in the integration and processing of pain signals.

Keywords

tension-type headache; resting-state fMRI; ReHo; basal ganglia

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