Clinical Research Papers:
Depressive symptom in the firstepisode schizophrenic patients is related to the reduction of grey matter volume in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex a pilot study
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Jiaojiao Xu1,*, Xibo He2,3,*, Ce Chen4,*, Hongjun Tian5, Lina Wang5, Jie Li5, Fuqiang Mao2, Chuanjun Zhuo2,4,5 and Danmin Miao1
1Faculty of Medical Psychology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xian, Shanxi, China
2The Department of Psychiatry, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
3The Department of Psychiatry, Tianjin Anding Hospital, Tianjin, China
4The Department of Psychiatry, Wenzhou Seventh People’s Hospital, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
5The Department of Psychiatric Neuroimaging Laboratory, Tianjin Anding Hospital, Tianjin, China
*These authors contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to:
Chuanjun Zhuo, email: [email protected], [email protected]
Danmin Miao, email: [email protected]
Keywords: first episode schizophrenia; depressive symptom; grey matter volume; MRI; sgACC
Received: September 26, 2017 Accepted: December 04, 2017 Published: January 12, 2018
ABSTRACT
Approximately 25–75% of patients with schizophrenia also present major depressive systems. Investigations into the pathological features associated with depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia would provide important information for the development of treatments for depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. In present study, we enrolled 17 first-episode schizophrenic patients with depressive symptoms and 17 well-matched first-episode schizophrenic patients without depressive symptoms and compared differences in their grey mater volume (GMV) using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We observed significantly decreased GMV in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) in the first episode schizophrenic patients with depressive symptoms compared to the first episode schizophrenic patients without depressive symptoms. However, we did not observe a correlation between the severity of the decreased GMV and the severity of depressive symptoms. Although convincing evidence supporting this postulation is lacking and requires further study for confirmation, to some extent, our findings provide indirect evidence for the suggestion that the reduction of the GMV in the sgACC may play a key role in the depressive symptoms in the first episode schizophrenic patients.