Department of Psychiatry, Inonu University, Medical School, Malatya, Turkey.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2011 Jan 15;35(1):203-7. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2010.11.005. Epub 2010 Nov 12.
Panic patients have many functional deficiencies in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Previous studies have shown changed pituitary gland volume in some psychiatric disorders that have functional deficiencies in the HPA axis. However, to date no study has evaluated the pituitary gland volume in patients with panic disorder (PD). We investigated the pituitary gland volume in patients with PD (n=27) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (n=27), using 1.5-T magnetic resonance imaging in this study. Analysis showed that patients with PD had significantly smaller pituitary volume compared to healthy subjects. Patients with agoraphobia especially had a significantly smaller pituitary volume than patients without agoraphobia. There was a significant relationship between the pituitary volume and both the severity of symptoms and the illness duration in the patient group. The results show that patients with PD have reduced pituitary volume, which may reflect the functional abnormalities seen in this disorder. These findings may help us better understand the pathology of PD.
惊恐障碍患者在下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴方面存在许多功能缺陷。先前的研究表明，在一些 HPA 轴功能缺陷的精神障碍中，垂体体积发生了变化。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究评估惊恐障碍（PD）患者的垂体体积。在这项研究中，我们使用 1.5-T 磁共振成像对 27 例 PD 患者（n=27）和年龄、性别匹配的健康对照者（n=27）进行了垂体体积研究。分析表明，与健康受试者相比，PD 患者的垂体体积明显较小。特别是有广场恐怖症的患者的垂体体积明显小于没有广场恐怖症的患者。在患者组中，垂体体积与症状严重程度和疾病持续时间之间存在显著关系。结果表明，PD 患者的垂体体积减少，这可能反映了该疾病中的功能异常。这些发现可能有助于我们更好地理解 PD 的发病机制。
