Clinical NeuroImaging Research Core, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2021 Sep;45(9):1790-1803. doi: 10.1111/acer.14678. Epub 2021 Aug 18.
Alterations in white matter microstructure associated with chronic alcohol use have been demonstrated in previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) research. However, there is conflicting evidence as to whether such differences are influenced by an individual's biological sex. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of sex differences in the white matter microstructure of the brains of individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and healthy controls.
One hundred participants with AUD (38 female, aged 21 to 68) participating in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's inpatient treatment program and 98 healthy control participants (52 female) underwent a diffusion-weighted scan. Images collected were processed for each subject individually, and voxelwise, tract-based spatial statistics analysis was conducted to test for differences in the DTI measures of fractional anisotropy (FA), axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD).
A 2-way, between-subjects ANCOVA that tested for differences by group and sex revealed widespread differences between AUD and control subjects, but no interaction between group and sex. Additional analyses exploring demographic and alcohol use variables showed significant impacts of age on white matter microstructure that were more pronounced in individuals with AUD. Plots of FA by age, sex, and group in major white matter tracts suggest a need to explore higher order interactions in larger samples.
These results bolster recent findings of similar microstructural properties in men and women with AUD but provide a rationale for the consideration of age when investigating the impacts of chronic alcohol use on the brain's white matter.
先前的弥散张量成像（DTI）研究已经证明，慢性酒精使用与白质微观结构的改变有关。然而，关于这些差异是否受到个体生物性别影响，存在相互矛盾的证据。本研究的目的是调查酒精使用障碍（AUD）患者和健康对照者大脑白质微观结构中是否存在性别差异。
98 名健康对照参与者（52 名女性）和 100 名参加国家酒精滥用和酒精中毒研究所住院治疗计划的 AUD 患者（38 名女性，年龄 21 至 68 岁）接受了弥散加权扫描。对每个受试者的图像进行单独处理，并进行基于体素的空间统计学分析，以测试各向异性分数（FA）、轴向弥散度（AD）和径向弥散度（RD）的 DTI 测量值的差异。
2 种，被试间的方差分析，检验了组和性别的差异，结果显示 AUD 和对照组之间存在广泛的差异，但组和性别的交互作用不显著。进一步分析探索了人口统计学和酒精使用变量，发现年龄对白质微观结构有显著影响，而在 AUD 患者中更为明显。FA 按年龄、性别和组在主要白质束中的分布图表明，在更大的样本中需要探索更高阶的相互作用。
这些结果支持了最近关于 AUD 男性和女性具有相似微观结构特性的发现，但为在研究慢性酒精使用对大脑白质的影响时考虑年龄提供了依据。
