摘要
Objective： Although lithium has been a commonly prescribed neurotrophic/neuroprotective mood-stabilizing agents, its effect on spontaneous brain activity in patients with bipolar depression remains unclear. The aim of this study is to reveal the basic mechanism underlying the pathological influences of lithium on resting-state brain function of bipolar depression patients. Methods：97 subjects including 9 bipolar depression patients with lithium treatment, 19 bipolar depression patients without lithium treatment and 69 healthy controls, were recruited to participate in this study. Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation （ ALFF ） and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation （ fALFF） were used to capture the changes of spontane-ous brain activity among different groups. In addition, further analysis in terms of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, the number of depressive episodes, and illness duration in pooled bipolar depression patients were conducted, which combined FLEF and fALEF to identify the basic neural features of bipolar depression patients. Results： It was observed from the imaging results that both the bipolar depression patients receiving lithium treatment and healthy control subjects showed signifi-cantly decreased ALFF/fALFF values in the right anterior cingulate cortex and right middle frontal gyrus compared to that from the bipolar depression patients without lithium treatmetn. The ALFF values of the right＆amp;nbsp;middle temporal gyrus was also found to be negative related to the number of depressive episode and the total episodes. Conclusions：Our findings suggested that the bipolar depression subjects were identified to have ab-normal ALFF/ fALFF in the corticolimbic systems, in-cluding regions like right anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral middle frontal gyrus, right orbital frontal gyrus, and right middle temporal gyrus. In addition, it was also revealed that the decreased ALFF/fALFF in the right anterior cingulate cortex and right middle frontal gyrus might be a biomarker that is related to the lithium effects.
基金
Acknowlegements ： The authors gratefully acknowledge the Beijing Normal University Imaging Center for Brain Research and Prof. Yufeng Zang for their contributions in MRI data acquisition. This study was supported by grants from the Beijing Municipal Science ＆ Technology Commission （Grant no. D121100005012002） , Beijing Municipal Administration of Hospitals Clinical Medicine Development of Special Funding Support （ Grant no. ZYLX201403） , the National Natural Science Foundation of China （ Grant no. 81471389 ） , the High level health technical personnel in Beijing （ Grant no. 2014 - 3-095）, the MYRG2014 - 00093 - FHS and MYRG 2015-00036- FHS grants from the University of Macao in Macao, and FDCT 026/2014/A1 and FDCT 025/ 2015/A1 grants from Macao government.
