Poster No:
1948
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Joanne Lin1, Ben Moloney1, Anna Forsyth2, Catherine Morgan1, Rachael Sumner1, Nicholas Hoeh1, Frederick Sundram1, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy1
Institutions:
1University of Auckland, Auckland, Auckland, 2University of Auckland, Auckland, AK
First Author:
Joanne Lin
University of Auckland
Auckland, Auckland
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Globally, more than 300 million people suffer from depression; it is now the leading cause of disability worldwide. Large population studies have demonstrated that current therapies are ineffective in approximately one third of patients. Inflammatory mechanisms have been increasingly implicated in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD); therefore, low-dose naltrexone (LDN), a drug with purported anti-inflammatory effects in the central nervous system, may be effect as an adjunctive treatment in MDD. Regional brain temperature and metabolite concentrations measured using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) are sensitive to neuroinflammation and so may be clinically useful in identifying and monitoring it in MDD. Therefore, this study aims to determine the effect of LDN on brain temperature and metabolites in participants with MDD.
Methods:
Thirty participants with moderate MDD and receiving pharmacological treatment were recruited into a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 12 weeks of LDN (4.5 mg/day). Single-voxel spectroscopy data were collected using a 3 T Siemens Vida Fit scanner at baseline and after 12 weeks of LDN. Spectra were acquired from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and right anterior insula (rAI). Brain temperature values were calculated using the software package Java-Based Magnetic Resonance User Interface (jMRUI) v7.0 and metabolite levels were calculated using the software package Linear Combination Model (LCModel).
Results:
Complete (baseline and follow-up) data were collected from 23 participants (LDN=10, placebo=12). After 12 weeks of treatment, there were no significant differences between groups in brain temperature or metabolite concentrations relative to total creatine. Group differences remained non-significant with the inclusion of grey matter proportion as a co-variate. Analysis of voxel composition and data quality metrics showed no significant differences between groups for all metrics except the signal-to-noise ratio in temperature analyses, which showed a significant difference between groups at baseline (F=5.87, p=0.02). This was driven by a greater SNR in the placebo group compared to the LDN group.
Conclusions:
These results indicate that LDN had no effect on brain temperature or metabolite concentrations in the dACC and rAI of patients with MDD. However, the sample size of this study was modest. Future studies should employ whole-brain spectroscopy techniques to investigate brain regions without a priori hypotheses regarding the location of pathology.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
MR Spectroscopy 1
Keywords:
MRI
Psychiatric Disorders
Other - Spectroscopy
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Resting state
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Patients
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
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Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Other, Please specify
-
Spectroscopy
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
3.0T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
Other, Please list
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jMRUI, LCModel
Provide references using APA citation style.
Not applicable
No