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. 2015 Aug 1:289:78-83.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.04.033. Epub 2015 Apr 25.

Hippocampal volume reduction in female but not male recent abstinent methamphetamine users

Jiang Du  1 , Meina Quan  2 , Wenxu Zhuang  1 , Na Zhong  1 , Haifeng Jiang  1 , David N Kennedy  2 , Amy Harrington  2 , Douglas Ziedonis  2 , Xiaoduo Fan  3 , Min Zhao  4
Affiliations

Hippocampal volume reduction in female but not male recent abstinent methamphetamine users

Jiang Du et al. Behav Brain Res. .

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests abnormalities in brain morphology including hippocampal structure in patients with methamphetamine (MA) dependence. This study was performed to examine hippocampal volume in abstinent MA users, and to further explore its relationship with cognitive function. 30 abstinent MA users (20 males and 10 females) with average 5.52 months of duration of abstinence and 29 healthy controls (19 males and 10 females) age 18-45 years old were recruited for clinical assessment and imaging scan. FreeSurfer was used to segment the hippocampus bilaterally, and hippocampal volumes were extracted for group and gender comparisons. Cognitive function was measured using the CogState Battery Chinese language version (CSB-C). Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for education showed a significant group by gender interaction for the right hippocampal relative volume adjusted for total brain size (p = 0.020); there was a significant difference between male controls and female controls (p < 0.001), but such a difference did not exist between male patients and female patients (p = 0.203). No significant correlations were found between hippocampal volume and cognitive measures. There seems to be a gender difference in how MA affects hippocampal volume in abstinent MA users. Hippocampus might be an important treatment target for cognitive improvement and functional recovery in this patient population, especially in females.

Keywords: Gender difference; Hippocampal volume; Methamphetamine dependence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest declaration: none

Declarations of interest

None

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative coronal view of left (green) and right (blue) hippocampus labels extracted from FreeSurfer. L: left; R: right; S: superior; I: inferior.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison of right hippocampal relative volume between male controls and male patients (A), and between female controls and female patients (B). * 0.01
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparison of right hippocampal relative volume between male controls and female controls (A), and between male patients and female patients (B). * 0.01
Figure 4
Figure 4
Correlation between right hippocampal relative volume and average dose of MA use in male and female patients. Although Spearman’s rho correlation was used to test statistical significance, regression lines were plotted for the convenience of the readers. *0.01
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