Papers Published

1. WD Taylor, JR Macfall, B Boyd, ME Payne, YI Sheline, RR Krishnan, P Murali Doraiswamy, One-year change in anterior cingulate cortex white matter microstructure: relationship with late-life depression outcomes., The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, vol. 19 no. 1 (January, 2011), pp. 43-52 [doi] .
   (last updated on 2013/05/16)

   Abstract:
   OBJECTIVE: differences in white matter structure measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) are associated with late-life depression, but results examining how these differences relate to antidepressant remission are mixed. To better describe these relationships, the authors examined how 1-year change in DTI measures are related to 1-year course of depression. METHODS: one-year cross-sectional follow-up to a 12-week clinical trial of sertraline. METHODS: outpatients at an academic medical center. METHODS: twenty-nine depressed and 20 never-depressed elderly subjects. Over the 1-year period, 16 depressed subjects achieved and maintained remission, whereas 13 did not. METHODS: one-year change in fractional anisotropy (FA) and diffusivity in frontal white matter, as measured by DTI. RESULTS: contrary to our hypotheses, depressed subjects who did not remit over the study interval exhibited significantly less change in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) white matter FA than did never-depressed or depressed-remitted subjects. There were no group differences in other frontal or central white matter regions. Moreover, there was a significant positive relationship between change in Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and change in ACC FA, wherein greater interval decline in FA was associated with greater interval decline in MADRS. CONCLUSIONS: older depressed individuals who remit exhibit white matter changes comparable with what is observed in never-depressed individuals, whereas nonremitters exhibit significantly less change in ACC FA. Such a finding may be related to either antidepressant effects on brain structure or the effects of chronic stress on brain structure. Further work is needed to better understand this relationship.

   Keywords:
   Aged • Anisotropy • Antidepressive Agents • Brain • Clinical Trials as Topic • Depression • Diffusion Tensor Imaging • Female • Follow-Up Studies • Gyrus Cinguli • Humans • Male • Nerve Fibers, Myelinated • Psychiatric Status Rating Scales • Remission Induction • Sertraline • drug therapy* • methods • pathology • pathology* • therapeutic use*