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Segregation and Integration of Resting-state Brain Networks in a Longitudinal Long COVID Cohort, 2025, Zhang et al

Discussion in 'Long Covid research' started by forestglip, Mar 20, 2025.

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  1. forestglip

    forestglip Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Segregation and Integration of Resting-state Brain Networks in a Longitudinal Long COVID Cohort

    Yuchen Zhang, Gengchen Ye, Wentao Zeng, Ruiting Zhu, Chiyin Li, Yanan Zhu, Dongbo Li, Jixin Liu, Wenyang Wang, Peng Li, Liming Fan, Rong Wang, Xuan Niu

    [Line breaks added]

    Highlights
    • Systematically explore multiscale neural mechanisms of post-viral fatigue progression.
    • Long COVID patients show higher fatigue scores and less segregated brain states.
    • Visual system and attention network are important in shaping long COVID fatigue perception.
    • Genes linked to abnormal social behavior may relate to long COVID fatigue.

    Summary
    Long COVID is characterized by debilitating fatigue, likely stemming from abnormal interactions among brain regions, but the neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we utilized a nested-spectral partition (NSP) approach to study the segregation and integration of resting-state brain functional networks in 34 long COVID patients from acute to chronic phase post-infection.

    Compared to healthy controls, long COVID patients exhibited significantly higher fatigue scores and shifted the brain into a less segregated state at both 1-month and 3-month post-infection. During the recovery of fatigue severity, there was no significant difference of segregation/integration.

    A positive correlation between network integration and fatigue was observed at 1-month, shifting to a negative correlation by 3-months.

    Gene ontology analysis revealed that both acute and long-term effects of fatigue were associated with abnormal social behavior.

    Our findings reveal the brain-network reconfiguration trajectories during post-viral fatigue progression that serve as functional biomarkers for tracking neurocognitive sequelae.

    Link | PDF (iScience) [Open Access, Pre-proof]
     
    forestglip, Mar 20, 2025
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  2. Turtle

    Turtle Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Abnormal social behavior genes cause fatigue?

    Makes me shiver.
     
    Turtle, Mar 20, 2025
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  3. Utsikt

    Utsikt Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It seems like they just put the set of genes into something calles ToppGene Suite and reported to result.
    [​IMG]
     
    Utsikt, Mar 20, 2025
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  4. SNT Gatchaman

    SNT Gatchaman Senior Member (Voting Rights) Staff Member

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    Leaving aside this nonsense …

    … I'm struggling to follow their overall logic and consistency.

    That seems to be saying more integration and less segregation correlates with more fatigue, at 1 month. But then at 3 months the brain changes persist ("no significant difference of segregation/integration") but the fatigue is decreasing/improving ("recovery")?

    In the body of the manuscript, they say —

    [17] is Fatigue and resting-state functional brain networks in breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy (2021, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment)

    So consistently they're reporting increased integration and decreased segregation. But the integration seems to have normalised by 3 months (as shown in their figure).

    So this is the reversal of correlation between 1 and 3 months. There's no change in brain findings, but fatigue scores have now reduced. (Doesn't that mean there's no correlation and fatigue is independent of brain network integration/segregation?)

    In the discussion —

    Then they say —

    So integration at 3-months was now the same as HCs and segregation was less reduced but not normal — all while fatigue scores were decreasing.

    Then they reference chronic fatigue syndrome, claiming replicative findings, but the reporting seems backwards.

    Haven't they been highlighting increased integration and decreased segregation through all this?

    [32] is The importance of glutamate in the neuro-endocrinological functions in multiple sclerosis, related to fatigue (2018, Rev Neurol, PubMed)
    [33] is Acute stress promotes brain network integration and reduces state transition variability (2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) which doesn't even mention the word fatigue.

    Then they conclude this section with —

    <shrug emoji>
     
    SNT Gatchaman, Mar 22, 2025
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  5. forestglip

    forestglip Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Well neither of the cited studies seems to be about CFS. But putting that aside, the second reference's abstract says stress made the brain more integrated and less segregated, which matches the rest of this paper. (Maybe stress=fatigue to them?) So that paragraph where it was flipped might have just been a mistake.
    The first reference's abstract doesn't mention these terms and is about MS.

    Or maybe they cited the wrong references. But I can't find any papers on Google Scholar or Pubmed about CFS brain integration/segregation.
     
    forestglip, Mar 22, 2025
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  6. Eleanor

    Eleanor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Kind of thing you'd get if you asked a chatbot to generate a paper and then to translate it into English, perhaps.

    The corresponding author's details are:

     
    Eleanor, Mar 22, 2025
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