Fig. 2.

Differences in global topological properties of the networks between the non-NPSLE patients and HCs across the sparsity range. The data points marked with an asterisk indicate a significant group difference (p < 0.05) under the sparsity. Both controls and patients showed a small-world property of networks characterized by γ ≫ 1 and λ ≈ 1. However, significant between-group differences were observed for most of the sparsity in global efficiency, local efficiency, and characteristic path length.