Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany.
J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2010 Jan;35(1):55-8. doi: 10.1503/jpn.090044.
Structural abnormality of the substantia nigra can be detected by transcranial sonography in neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinson disease and restless legs syndrome. We investigated echogenicity of the substantia nigra as a potential structural marker for dysfunction of the nigrostriatal dopamine system in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
We used a blinded design and determined echogenicity of the substantia nigra by use of transcranial sonography in 22 children with ADHD and 22 healthy controls matched for age and sex.
The echogenic substantia nigra area was significantly larger in ADHD patients than in healthy controls (F(1,42) = 9.298, p = 0.004, effect size = 0.92). We found no effects of age or sex.
Owing to a lack of dimensional assessment, we could not analyze the correlation between echogenicity and clinical symptoms.
Our results support the hypothesis that the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system is abnormal in children with ADHD.
经颅超声检查可发现神经精神疾病(如帕金森病和不宁腿综合征)患者黑质结构异常。我们研究了儿童注意缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)患者黑质回声强度作为黑质纹状体多巴胺能系统功能障碍的潜在结构标志物。
我们采用盲法设计,使用经颅超声检查 22 名 ADHD 患儿和 22 名年龄和性别匹配的健康对照者的黑质回声强度。
ADHD 患儿的黑质回声面积明显大于健康对照组(F(1,42) = 9.298,p = 0.004,效应量=0.92)。我们未发现年龄或性别因素的影响。
由于缺乏维度评估,我们无法分析回声强度与临床症状之间的相关性。
我们的结果支持了这样一种假说,即 ADHD 患儿的黑质纹状体多巴胺能系统异常。