ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the gender differences of glucose metabolic network in brains of healthy adults at resting state by 18F-FDG PET.Methods A total of 204 dextromanual,healthy individuals (104 males,average age:(53.45±11.51) years;100 females,average age:(54.11±12.09) years) were enrolled from June 2011 to June 2016 to construct brain metabolic networks.The nodal and global parameters,including clustering coefficient (Cp),characteristic path length (Lp) and betweenness centrality (Cb),were analyzed by graph theory.Permutation test with 1 000 repetitions was used.Results The brain metabolic networks derived from 18F-FDG PET data were with small-world properties in both male group and female group.Compared with Cb in females,Cb in males was significantly reduced in left postcentral gyrus,right angular gyrus and left temporal pole/middle temporal gyrus (permutation test,all P0.05).Conclusions There are gender-related differences of topological structure in whole-brain metabolic networks.Gender should be considered as a covariate while designing experiments,accounting for cerebral metabolic data from normal control and experimental patients as well as making clinical decisions.