Citation

Fan D, He C, Liu X, Zang F, Zhu Y, Zhang H, Zhang H, Zhang Z, Xie C. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 2022; 42(9): 1603-1615.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1177/0271678X221090998

PMID

35350926

PMCID

PMC9441724

Abstract

The relationships among cerebral blood flow (CBF), functional connectivity (FC) and suicidal ideation (SI) in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients have remained elusive. In this study, we characterized the changes in CBF and FC among 175 individuals including 47 MDD without SI (MDDNSI), 59 MDD with SI (MDDSI), and 69 healthy control (HC) who underwent arterial spin labeling and resting-state functional MRI scans. Then the voxel-wise CBF, seed-based FC and partial correlation analyses were measured. Mediation analysis was carried out to reveal the effects of FC on the association between CBF and behavioral performances in both subgroups.

RESULTS showed that CBF was higher in MDDSI patients in the bilateral precuneus compared to HC and MDDNSI participants. MDDSI patients exhibited enhanced FC in the prefrontal-limbic system and decreased FC in the sensorimotor cortex (SMC) relative to MDDNSI patients. CBF and FC were significantly correlated with clinical variables. More importantly, exploratory mediation analyses identified that abnormal FC can mediate the association between regional CBF and behavioral performances. These results highlight the potential role of precuneus gyrus, prefrontal-limbic system as well as SMC in the process of suicide and provide new insights into the neural mechanism underlying suicide in MDD patients.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Depression; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Suicidal Ideation; suicidal ideation; Depressive Disorder, Major; mediation analysis; functional connectivity; arterial spin labeling; Parietal Lobe; cerebral blood flow; Cerebrovascular Circulation