Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230022, Anhui Province, China.
BMC Psychiatry. 2019 Mar 25;19(1):96. doi: 10.1186/s12888-019-2079-6.
Previous studies have provided evidence that alcohol-dependent patients have abnormality in corpus callosum (CC); however, it is unclear whether micro-structural integrity of the CC subregions is differentially affected in this disorder.
In this study, a total of 39 male individuals, including 19 alcohol-dependent patients and 20 age-matched healthy controls, underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). CC was reconstructed by DTI tractography and was divided into seven subregions. Multiple diffusion metrics of each subregion were compared between two groups.
Compared to healthy controls, patients exhibited increased axial diffusivity (P = 0.007), radial diffusivity (P = 0.009) and mean diffusivity (P = 0.005) in the isthmus. In addition, we observed that daily alcohol intake was correlated positively with radial diffusivity and mean diffusivity and negatively with fractional anisotropy, while abstinence time of hospitalization was negatively correlated with mean diffusivity in the patients.
These findings suggest a selective micro-structural integrity impairment of the corpus callosum subregions in alcohol dependence, characterized by axon and myelin alterations in the isthmus.
先前的研究已经证明，酒精依赖患者胼胝体（CC）存在异常；然而，在这种疾病中，CC 的亚区的微观结构完整性是否受到不同程度的影响尚不清楚。
本研究共纳入 39 名男性个体，包括 19 名酒精依赖患者和 20 名年龄匹配的健康对照者，进行了弥散张量成像（DTI）检查。通过 DTI 追踪技术重建 CC，并将其分为 7 个亚区。比较两组之间各亚区的多个弥散指标。
与健康对照组相比，患者的峡部轴向弥散度（P=0.007）、径向弥散度（P=0.009）和平均弥散度（P=0.005）增加。此外，我们观察到，每日饮酒量与径向弥散度和平均弥散度呈正相关，与各向异性分数呈负相关，而住院戒酒时间与患者的平均弥散度呈负相关。
这些发现表明，酒精依赖患者胼胝体亚区存在选择性的微观结构完整性损伤，其特征为峡部的轴突和髓鞘改变。
