Abstract
ObjectiveThis study analyzed the differences in the cerebral blood flow (CBF) between unilateral Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL) patients and healthy controls (HCs). We also investigated CBF differences in auditory-related areas in patients with left- and right-sided SSNHL (lSSNHL and rSSNHL) and HCs. We further explore the correlation between unilateral SSNHL characteristics and changes in the CBF.Methods36 patients with unilateral SSNHL (15 males and 21 females, 40.39 ± 13.42 years) and 36 HCs (15 males and 21 females, 40.39 ± 14.11 years) were recruited. CBF images were collected and analyzed using arterial spin labeling (ASL). CereFlow software was used for the post-processing of the ASL data to obtain the CBF value of 246 subregions within brainnetome atlas (BNA). The Two-sample t-test was used to compare CBF differences between SSNHL patients and HCs. One-way ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the CBF difference of auditory-related areas among the three groups (lSSNHL, rSSNHL, and HCs). Then, the correlation between CBF changes and specific clinical characteristics were calculated.ResultsThe SSNHL patients exhibited decreased CBF in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus (MFG, MFG_7_1 and MFG_7_3), the contralateral precentral gyrus (PrG, PrG_6_3) and the bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL, bilateral SPL_5_1, SPL_5_2, and ipsilateral SPL_5_4), p < 0.0002. Compared with HCs, unilateral SSNHL patients exhibited increased rCBF in the bilateral orbital gyrus (OrG, OrG_6_5), the bilateral inferior temporal gyrus (ITG, contralateral ITG_7_1 and bilateral ITG_7_7), p < 0.0002. lSSNHL showed abnormal CBF in left BA21 caudal (p = 0.02) and left BA37 dorsolateral (p = 0.047). We found that the CBF in ipsilateral MFG_7_1 of SSNHL patients was positively correlated with tinnitus Visual Analog Scale (VAS) score (r = 0.485, p = 0.008).ConclusionOur preliminary study explored CBF pattern changes in unilateral SSNHL patients in auditory-related areas and non-auditory areas, suggesting that there may exist reduced attention and some sensory compensation in patients with SSNHL. These findings could advance our understanding of the potential pathophysiology of unilateral SSNHL.
Highlights
Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL) is defined as a hearing loss of over 30 dB in three sequential frequencies in the pure-tone audiogram within 72 h, and is considered as an otologic emergency (Stachler et al, 2012)
We found that the cerebral blood flow (CBF) in ipsilateral MFG_7_1 of SSNHL patients was positively correlated with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score (r = 0.485, p = 0.008) (Figure 7)
Our preliminary study explored CBF pattern changes in unilateral SSNHL patients in auditory-related areas and nonauditory areas, suggesting that there may exist reduced attention and some sensory compensation in patients with SSNHL
Summary
Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL) is defined as a hearing loss of over 30 dB in three sequential frequencies in the pure-tone audiogram within 72 h, and is considered as an otologic emergency (Stachler et al, 2012). Some SSNHL patients do not respond to conventional treatment, which leads to a low long-term quality of life (Liu et al, 2020). Previous studies have reported that hearing loss induced brain structural changes, brain functional changes and reorganization of functional cerebral networks. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study found the changes of default mode networks (DMN) in patients with long-term unilateral SSNHL might be associated with cognitive ability of patients (Zhang et al, 2015). Another resting-state fMRI found that there existed a shift toward small-worldization in unilateral SSNHL patients functional connectome (Xu et al, 2016).
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