Larger hypothalamic subfield volumes in patients with chronic insomnia disorder and relationships to levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone.

The hypothalamus is a well-established core structure in the sleep-wake cycle. While previous studies have not consistently found whole hypothalamus volume changes in chronic insomnia disorder (CID), differences may exist at the smaller substructural level of the hypothalamic nuclei. The study aimed to investigate the differences in total and subfield hypothalamic volumes, between CID patients and healthy controls (HCs) in vivo, through an advanced deep learning-based automated segmentation tool. A total of 150 patients with CID and 155 demographically matched HCs underwent T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance scanning. We utilized FreeSurfer v7.2 for automated segmentation of the hypothalamus and its five nuclei. Additionally, correlation and causal mediation analyses were performed to investigate the association between hypothalamic volume changes, insomnia symptom severity, and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-related blood biomarkers. CID patients exhibited larger volumes in the right anterior inferior, left anterior superior, and left posterior subunits of the hypothalamus compared to HCs. Moreover, we observed a positive association between blood corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) levels and insomnia severity, with anterior inferior hypothalamus (a-iHyp) hypertrophy mediating this relationship. In conclusion, we found significant volume increases in several hypothalamic subfield regions in CID patients, highlighting the central role of the HPA axis in the pathophysiology of insomnia.

Inhibitory Deficits of Insomnia Disorder: A Meta-Analysis on Event Related Potentials in Auditory Oddball Task.

BACKGROUND: Despite numerous studies on auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) in insomnia disorder (ID), the results are inconsistent across different ERP components (e.g. N1, P2, P3, and N350), types of auditory stimuli (e.g. standard and deviant), and stages of sleep (e.g. wakefulness, NREM sleep, and REM sleep). In light of this variability, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of previous auditory ERP studies in ID to provide a quantitative review of the existing literature. METHODS: Relevant literatures were searched on the Embase, PubMed/MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Cochrane Library. A total of 12 studies comprising 497 participants were finally included in this meta-analysis. The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO under the registration number CRD42022308348. RESULTS: We found that patients with ID have significantly decreased N1 (Hedges' g = 0.34, 95%CI [0.04, 0.65]) and P3 (Hedges'g = -1.21, 95%CI [-2.37, -0.06]) amplitudes during wakefulness. In addition, decreases in P2 (Hedges'g = -0.57, 95%CI [-0.96, -0.17]) amplitude during wakefulness and N350 (Hedges' g = 0.73, 95%CI [0.36, 1.09]) amplitude during NREM. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis represents the first systematic investigation of ERP features across different stages of sleep in individuals with ID. Our results suggest that in patients with insomnia, the absence or deficiency of arousal inhibition during the nighttime sleep initiation or maintenance process may interfere with the normal process of sleep.

Integrated transcriptome and microRNA profiles analysis reveals molecular mechanisms underlying the consecutive monoculture problem of Polygonatum odoratum.

Polygonatum odoratum is a historically traditional Chinese medicine plant. However, the consecutive monoculture problem (CMP) widespread in other Chinese medicine limiting their cultivation on a large scale. In this study, the physiological data showed the adverse effect of CMP on the growth of P. odoratum under the consecutive cropping (CC) compared with the first cropping (FC). Then the high-throughput sequencing of miRNA and mRNA libraries of leaves and roots from FC and CC P. odoratum plants identified 671 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 184 differentially expressed miRNAs and revealed that the DEGs and target genes of the miRNAs were mainly involved in starch and sucrose metabolism, phenylpropanoid and brassinosteroid biosynthesis. The KEGG analysis revealed that the DEGs between CC and FC roots were enriched in the plant-pathogen interaction pathway. This study provided the expression regulation of genes related to CMP of P. odoratum but also suggested that CMP may result in the serious damage of pathogens to roots and cause the slow growth in the consecutive cropping plants.