TY - JOUR PY - 1997// TI - Single-photon emission tomography imaging of monoamine transporters in impulsive violent behaviour JO - European journal of nuclear medicine A1 - Tiihonen, Jari A1 - Kuikka, J. T. A1 - Bergström, K. A. A1 - Karhu, J. A1 - Viinamäki, H. A1 - Lehtonen, J. A1 - Hallikainen, T. A1 - Yang, Jingzhen A1 - Hakola, P. SP - 1253 EP - 1260 VL - 24 IS - 10 N2 - Several studies have shown that impulsive violent and suicidal behaviour is associated with a central serotonin deficit, but until now it has not been possible to use laboratory tests with high sensitivity and specificity to study this kind of deficit or to localize the sites of serotonergic abnormalities in the living human brain. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that monoamine transporter density in brain is decreased in subjects with impulsive violent behaviour. We studied serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA) transporter specific binding in 52 subjects (21 impulsive violent offenders, 21 age- and sex-matched healthy controls, and ten non-violent alcoholic controls) with single-photon emission tomography (SPET) using iodine-123-labelled 2beta-carbomethoxy-3beta(4-iodophenyl)tropane ([123I]beta-CIT) as the tracer. The blind quantitative analysis revealed that the 5-HT specific binding of [123I]beta-CIT in the midbrain of violent offenders was lower than that in the healthy control subjects (P<0. 005; t test) or the non-violent alcoholics (P<0.05). The results imply that habitual impulsive aggressive behaviour in man is associated with a decrease in the 5-HT transporter density.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0340-6997 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -