Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Biol Psychiatry. 2010 Jul 15;68(2):205-8. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.02.009. Epub 2010 Mar 31.
Everyday language relates depressed mood to visual phenomena. Previous studies point to a reduced sensitivity of subjective contrast perception in depressed patients. One way to assess visual contrast perception in an objective way at the level of the retina is to measure the pattern electroretinogram (PERG). To find an objective correlate of reduced contrast perception, we measured the PERG in healthy control subjects and unmedicated and medicated patients with depression.
Forty patients with a diagnosis of major depression (20 with and 20 without medication) and 40 matched healthy subjects were studied. Visual PERGs were recorded from both eyes.
Unmedicated and medicated depressed patients displayed dramatically lower retinal contrast gain. We found a strong and significant correlation between contrast gain and severity of depression. This marker distinguishes most patients on a single-case basis from control subjects. A receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed a specificity of 92.5% and a sensitivity of 77.5% for classifying the participants correctly.
Because PERG recording does not depend on subjective ratings, this marker may be an objective correlate of depression in human beings. If replicated, PERG may be helpful in further animal and human research in depression.
日常用语将抑郁情绪与视觉现象联系起来。先前的研究表明，抑郁患者的主观对比感知敏感性降低。在视网膜水平上以客观方式评估视觉对比感知的一种方法是测量图形视网膜电图（PERG）。为了找到降低对比感知的客观相关物，我们在健康对照组和未经药物治疗和药物治疗的抑郁症患者中测量了 PERG。
研究了 40 名被诊断为重度抑郁症的患者（20 名未经药物治疗和 20 名经药物治疗）和 40 名匹配的健康受试者。从双眼记录视觉 PERG。
未经药物治疗和药物治疗的抑郁患者的视网膜对比增益明显降低。我们发现对比增益与抑郁严重程度之间存在很强的显著相关性。该标志物可以在单个病例的基础上将大多数患者与对照组区分开来。接收器工作特征分析显示，正确分类参与者的特异性为 92.5%，敏感性为 77.5%。
由于 PERG 记录不依赖于主观评分，因此该标志物可能是人类抑郁的客观相关物。如果得到复制，PERG 可能有助于进一步进行抑郁的动物和人类研究。
