Transcriptional signatures of aberrant brain functional network topology in chronic low back pain with lumbar disc herniation.

Authors

Chuanxu Luo, Wanting Liu, Xiaoyi Liu, Han Xu, Hao Gu, Yapan Zhang, Fengchao Shi, Wenhui Li, Siyu Gu

Published in

Frontiers in molecular neuroscience. Volume 19. Pages 1790428. Epub Aug 12, 2026.

Abstract

The central pathophysiology of chronic low back pain (CLBP) secondary to lumbar disc herniation (LDH) remains poorly understood, particularly the link between macroscale brain network dysfunction and its microscale biological underpinnings. This study aimed to bridge this critical gap by integrating resting-state fMRI, graph theory, and imaging transcriptomics.
Resting-state fMRI data were acquired from 62 CLBP patients with LDH and 67 matched healthy controls (HCs). Whole-brain functional networks were constructed for each participant by calculating functional connectivity (FC) between 90 anatomical regions. Graph theoretical analysis was employed to derive global and nodal topological metrics. Group differences were identified and correlated with clinical variables. Crucially, these neuroimaging phenotypes were spatially mapped against the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) to uncover potential spatial molecular vulnerabilities.
At the connectional level, CLBP patients with LDH exhibited widespread hypoconnectivity across sensorimotor, ventral attention, and default mode networks. Further topological analysis revealed a profound focal degradation of hub function in the cingulate cortex, characterized by significantly reduced nodal degree, efficiency, and betweenness centrality (p < 0.001), alongside decreased nodal efficiency in the right supplementary motor area, while global network architecture was preserved. Critically, these deficits in cingulate hub topology were significantly correlated with pain intensity. Imaging transcriptomics linked this focal topological failure to genes enriched for neuroinflammatory and synaptic plasticity pathways.
These findings reveal multi-level functional network alterations in CLBP with LDH, linking focal hub failure to potential spatial molecular vulnerabilities associated with neuroinflammation and synaptic remodeling.

PMID:
42656466
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.