Advanced Imaging Research Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA.
Neuropsychopharmacology. 2011 Feb;36(3):684-91. doi: 10.1038/npp.2010.199. Epub 2010 Nov 17.
Alterations in white matter integrity of several cortical and subcortical circuits have been reported in relation to unipolar major depressive disorder. It is not clear whether these white matter changes precede the onset of illness. In all, 13 adolescent volunteers with no personal or family history of a psychiatric disorder (controls) and 18 adolescent volunteers with no personal history of a psychiatric illness including depression, but who were at high risk for developing unipolar depression by virtue of parental depression (high-risk youth), underwent diffusion tensor imaging studies. An automated tract-based spatial statistics method, a whole-brain voxel-by-voxel analysis, was used to analyze the scans. Population average diffusion parameter values were also calculated for each tract. Adolescents at high risk for unipolar depression had lower fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the left cingulum, splenium of the corpus callosum, superior longitudinal fasciculi, uncinate, and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculi than did controls. Altered white matter integrity in healthy adolescents at familial risk for unipolar depression suggests that it might serve as a vulnerability marker for the illness.
据报道，在单相重性抑郁障碍中，几个皮质和皮质下回路的白质完整性发生了改变。目前尚不清楚这些白质变化是否先于疾病的发作。共有 13 名没有个人或家族精神病史的青少年志愿者（对照组）和 18 名没有个人精神病史的青少年志愿者（包括抑郁症），但由于父母患有抑郁症而处于单相抑郁的高风险中（高危青年），他们接受了弥散张量成像研究。使用基于自动束的空间统计学方法，对整个大脑进行体素分析。还计算了每个束的群体平均扩散参数值。与对照组相比，患有单相抑郁高风险的青少年左侧扣带束、胼胝体压部、上纵束、钩束和下额枕束的各向异性分数（FA）值较低。在有单相抑郁家族史的健康青少年中，白质完整性的改变表明它可能是这种疾病的易感性标志物。
