Cieri Filippo, Esposito Roberto, Cera Nicoletta, Pieramico Valentina, Tartaro Armando, di Giannantonio Massimo
1 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Science, University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy.
2 Faculty of Psychology and Educational science, Center for Psychology at the University of Porto (CPUP), University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol. 2017 May;30(3):140-150. doi: 10.1177/0891988717700509. Epub 2017 Mar 30.
Late-life depression (LLD) is a common emotional and mental disability in the elderly population characterized by the presence of depressed mood, the loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities, and other depression symptoms. It has a serious effect on the quality of life of elderly individuals and increases their risk of developing physical and mental diseases. It is an important area of research, given the growing elderly population. Brain functional connectivity modifications represent one of the neurobiological biomarker for LLD even if to date remains poorly understood. In our study, we enrolled 10 elderly patients with depressive symptoms compared to 11 age-matched healthy controls. All participants were evaluated by means of neuropsychological tests and underwent the same functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol to evaluate modifications of brain resting state functional connectivity. Between-group differences were observed for the Geriatric Depression Scale and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, with higher scores for patients with LLD. Voxel-wise, 1-way analysis of variance revealed between-group differences in left frontoparietal network (lFPN) and sensory motor network (SMN): Increased intrinsic connectivity in the LLD group was observed in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in the left superior parietal lobule of the lFPN and increased intrinsic connectivity in the LLD group was observed in the bilateral primary somatosensory cortex of the SMN. Our findings support the use of resting state fMRI as a potential biomarker for LLD; even if to confirm the relationship between brain changes and the pathophysiology of LLD, longitudinal neuroimaging studies are required.
老年期抑郁症（LLD）是老年人群中一种常见的情感和精神障碍，其特征为情绪低落、对日常活动失去兴趣或愉悦感以及其他抑郁症状。它对老年人的生活质量有严重影响，并增加了他们患身心疾病的风险。鉴于老年人口不断增加，这是一个重要的研究领域。脑功能连接改变是LLD的神经生物学生物标志物之一，尽管迄今为止人们对此仍知之甚少。在我们的研究中，我们招募了10名有抑郁症状的老年患者，并与11名年龄匹配的健康对照者进行比较。所有参与者都通过神经心理学测试进行评估，并接受相同的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）方案，以评估大脑静息态功能连接的改变。在老年抑郁量表和汉密尔顿抑郁评定量表上观察到组间差异，LLD患者得分更高。体素水平的单因素方差分析显示，左额顶叶网络（lFPN）和感觉运动网络（SMN）存在组间差异：在LLD组中，观察到lFPN的左背外侧前额叶皮质和左上顶叶小叶的内在连接增加，在SMN的双侧初级躯体感觉皮质中也观察到LLD组的内在连接增加。我们的研究结果支持将静息态fMRI用作LLD的潜在生物标志物；尽管要确认大脑变化与LLD病理生理学之间的关系，还需要进行纵向神经影像学研究。
