TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2022//
TI  - Familial risk for major depression: differential white matter alterations in healthy and depressed participants
JO  - Psychological medicine
A1  - Winter, Alexandra
A1  - Thiel, Katharina
A1  - Meinert, Susanne
A1  - Lemke, Hannah
A1  - Waltemate, Lena
A1  - Breuer, Fabian
A1  - Culemann, Regina
A1  - Pfarr, Julia-Katharina
A1  - Stein, Frederike
A1  - Brosch, Katharina
A1  - Meller, Tina
A1  - Ringwald, Kai Gustav
A1  - Thomas-Odenthal, Florian
A1  - Jansen, Andreas
A1  - Nenadic, Igor
A1  - Krug, Axel
A1  - Repple, Jonathan
A1  - Opel, Nils
A1  - Dohm, Katharina
A1  - Leehr, Elisabeth J.
A1  - Grotegerd, Dominik
A1  - Kugel, Harald
A1  - Hahn, Tim
A1  - Kircher, Tilo
A1  - Dannlowski, Udo
SP  - ePub
EP  - ePub
VL  - ePub
IS  - ePub
N2  - BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with alterations in brain white matter (WM) microstructure. However, diffusion tensor imaging studies in biological relatives have presented contradicting results on WM alterations and their potential as biomarkers for vulnerability or resilience. To shed more light on associations between WM microstructure and resilience to familial risk, analyses including both healthy and depressed relatives of MDD patients are needed. <br><br>METHODS: In a 2 (MDD v. healthy controls, HC) × 2 (familial risk yes v. no) design, we investigated fractional anisotropy (FA) via tract-based spatial statistics in a large well-characterised adult sample (N = 528), with additional controls for childhood maltreatment, a potentially confounding proxy for environmental risk. <br><br>RESULTS: Analyses revealed a significant main effect of diagnosis on FA in the forceps minor and the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (p(tfce-FWE) = 0.009). Furthermore, a significant interaction of diagnosis with familial risk emerged (p(tfce-FWE) = 0.036) Post-hoc pairwise comparisons showed significantly higher FA, mainly in the forceps minor and right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, in HC with as compared to HC without familial risk (p(tfce-FWE) < 0.001), whereas familial risk played no role in MDD patients (p(tfce-FWE) = 0.797). Adding childhood maltreatment as a covariate, the interaction effect remained stable. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: We found widespread increased FA in HC with familial risk for MDD as compared to a HC low-risk sample. The significant effect of risk on FA was present only in HC, but not in the MDD sample. These alterations might reflect compensatory neural mechanisms in healthy adults at risk for MDD potentially associated with resilience.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0033-2917
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S003329172200188X
ID  - ref1
ER  -