Department of Psychiatry, Keelung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Keelung City, Taiwan; College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan County, Taiwan; Community Medicine Research Center, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Keelung, Keelung, Taiwan.
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2024 Jun;340:111793. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2024.111793. Epub 2024 Feb 10.
Fatigability is prevalent in older adults. However, it is often associated with depressed mood. We aim to investigate these two psychobehavioral constructs by examining their underpinning of white matter structures in the brain and their associations with different medical conditions.
Twenty-seven older adults with late-life depression (LLD) and 34 cognitively normal controls (CN) underwent multi-shell diffusion MRI. Fatigability was measured with the Pittsburgh Fatigability Scale. We examined white matter integrity by measuring the quantitative anisotropy (QA), a fiber tracking parameter with better accuracy than the traditional imaging technique.
We found those with LLD had lower QA in the 2nd branch of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF-II), and those with more physical fatigability had lower QA in more widespread brain regions. In tracts associated with more physical fatigability, the lower QA in left acoustic radiation and left superior thalamic radiation correlated with higher blood glucose (r = - 0.46 and - 0.49). In tracts associated with depression, lower QA in left SLF-II correlated with higher bilirubin level (r = - 0.58).
Depression and fatigability were associated with various white matter integrity changes, which correlated with biochemistry biomarkers all related to inflammation.
疲劳在老年人中很常见。然而，它通常与抑郁情绪有关。我们旨在通过研究大脑白质结构的基础以及它们与不同医学状况的关联来研究这两种心理行为结构。
27 名患有老年期抑郁症（LLD）的老年人和 34 名认知正常的对照组（CN）接受了多壳扩散 MRI 检查。疲劳程度通过匹兹堡疲劳量表进行测量。我们通过测量定量各向异性（QA）来评估白质完整性，QA 是一种比传统成像技术更准确的纤维追踪参数。
我们发现 LLD 患者左额上纵束（SLF-II）的第 2 分支的 QA 较低，而身体疲劳程度较高的患者在更广泛的脑区的 QA 较低。在与身体疲劳程度相关的束中，左侧听辐射和左侧丘脑上辐射的较低 QA 与较高的血糖水平相关（r = -0.46 和 -0.49）。在与抑郁相关的束中，左 SLF-II 的较低 QA 与较高的胆红素水平相关（r = -0.58）。
抑郁和疲劳与各种白质完整性变化相关，这些变化与炎症相关的生物化学标志物有关。
