Regenold William T, Phatak Pornima, Marano Christopher M, Gearhart Lorie, Viens Claudia H, Hisley K Calvin
University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
Psychiatry Res. 2007 Jun 30;151(3):179-88. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2006.12.019. Epub 2007 Apr 11.
Neuroimaging and postmortem studies suggest the involvement of white matter disease in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and unipolar major depression. To date there is no published, collective study of myelin staining in these three psychiatric disorders. Deep white matter lesions, potentially affecting corticolimbic circuits, have been particularly implicated in late life depression and poor outcome bipolar disorder. We hypothesized that individuals with these disorders would manifest reduced deep white matter myelin staining compared to normal controls. Sixty transverse sections of fixed dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - 15 from individuals with each psychiatric disorder and 15 from normal controls - were stained according to the method of Kluver and Barrera. Myelin staining intensity was quantified by digital image analysis and expressed as a percent of grey matter staining for a given section. Mean deep (but not gyral) white matter myelin staining was less intense in all three psychiatric groups compared to control. This difference was statistically significant for the bipolar and unipolar groups, with a strong trend toward attenuated staining in the schizophrenic group. Our findings are consistent with postmortem and neuroimaging studies of affective disorders that indicate an increased prevalence of deep white matter lesions in unipolar and bipolar affective disorders.
神经影像学和尸检研究表明，白质疾病与精神分裂症、双相情感障碍和单相重度抑郁症有关。迄今为止，尚未有关于这三种精神疾病髓鞘染色的公开的集体研究。深部白质病变可能影响皮质边缘回路，尤其与老年抑郁症和双相情感障碍的不良预后有关。我们假设，与正常对照组相比，患有这些疾病的个体深部白质髓鞘染色会减少。根据Kluver和Barrera的方法，对60个固定的背外侧前额叶皮质横切片进行染色，其中15个来自每种精神疾病患者，15个来自正常对照组。通过数字图像分析对髓鞘染色强度进行量化，并表示为给定切片灰质染色的百分比。与对照组相比，所有三个精神疾病组的平均深部（而非脑回）白质髓鞘染色强度均较低。双相情感障碍组和单相情感障碍组的这种差异具有统计学意义，精神分裂症组有染色减弱的强烈趋势。我们的研究结果与情感障碍的尸检和神经影像学研究一致，并表明单相和双相情感障碍中深部白质病变的患病率增加。
