Monkul E Serap, Nicoletti Mark A, Spence David, Sassi Roberto B, Axelson David, Brambilla Paolo, Hatch John P, Keshavan Matcheri, Ryan Neal, Birmaher Boris, Soares Jair C
MOOD-CNS Program, Division of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78229, USA.
Depress Anxiety. 2006;23(6):347-52. doi: 10.1002/da.20161.
In vivo imaging studies suggest functional abnormalities of the thalamus in adult patients with bipolar disorder, but the presence of anatomical abnormalities is controversial. Our objective in this study was to compare the thalamus volumes of children and adolescents with bipolar disorder versus healthy controls to determine whether any morphological abnormalities exist early in illness course. We studied 16 patients with bipolar disorder according to DSM-IV criteria (mean age+/-SD=15.5+/-3.4 years) and 21 healthy control subjects (mean age+/-SD=16.9+/-3.8 years). Blinded examiners measured thalamic gray matter volumes with a semiautomated technique. Analysis of covariance, with age, gender, and intracranial brain volume as covariates, revealed no significant differences in left and right thalamic volumes between patients with bipolar disorder and healthy controls. Our findings indicate there are no significant differences in thalamus size between children and adolescents with bipolar disorder and healthy comparison subjects, in contrast to available findings for schizophrenia and first-break psychosis. Any differences in thalamus size that may exist between patients with bipolar disorder and healthy controls must amount to small effect sizes.
体内成像研究表明，双相情感障碍成年患者的丘脑存在功能异常，但解剖学异常的存在存在争议。我们这项研究的目的是比较双相情感障碍儿童和青少年与健康对照者的丘脑体积，以确定在疾病进程早期是否存在任何形态学异常。我们根据《精神疾病诊断与统计手册》第四版标准研究了16例双相情感障碍患者（平均年龄±标准差=15.5±3.4岁）和21名健康对照者（平均年龄±标准差=16.9±3.8岁）。不知情的检查人员使用半自动技术测量丘脑灰质体积。以年龄、性别和颅内脑体积作为协变量进行协方差分析，结果显示双相情感障碍患者与健康对照者之间左右丘脑体积无显著差异。我们的研究结果表明，与精神分裂症和首次发作精神病的现有研究结果相反，双相情感障碍儿童和青少年与健康对照者之间的丘脑大小无显著差异。双相情感障碍患者与健康对照者之间可能存在的丘脑大小差异必定很小。
