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. 2020 Jan-Feb;42(1):6-13.
doi: 10.1590/1516-4446-2019-0508.

Neuroimaging adolescents with depression in a middle-income country: feasibility of an fMRI protocol and preliminary results

Lucas Battel  1   2 , Johnna Swartz  3 , Mauricio Anes  4 , Pedro H Manfro  1   2 , Luis A Rohde  1   2 , Anna Viduani  1   2 , Valeria Mondelli  5 , Christian Kieling  1   2
Affiliations

Neuroimaging adolescents with depression in a middle-income country: feasibility of an fMRI protocol and preliminary results

Lucas Battel et al. Braz J Psychiatry. 2020 Jan-Feb.

Abstract

Objective: To test the feasibility and to present preliminary results of a neuroimaging protocol to evaluate adolescent depression in a middle-income setting.

Methods: We assessed psychotropic medication-free adolescents (age range 14-16 years) with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants underwent a comprehensive clinical evaluation and both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this pilot study, a preliminary single-group analysis of resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) data was performed, with a focus on the default mode network (DMN), cognitive control network (CCN), and salience network (SN).

Results: The sample included 29 adolescents with MDD (mean age 16.01, SD 0.78) who completed the protocol. Only two participants were excluded due to MRI quality issues (head movement), and were not included in the analyses. The scans showed significant connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex (DMN), the ACC and anterior insula (SN), and the lateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal parietal cortex (CCN).

Conclusion: We demonstrated the feasibility of implementing a complex neuroimaging protocol in a middle-income country. Further, our preliminary rs-fMRI data revealed patterns of resting-state connectivity consistent with prior research performed in adolescents from high-income countries.

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Conflict of interest statement

LAR has been on the speakers’ bureau/advisory board and/or has acted as a consultant for Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Medice, Novartis/Sandoz, and Shire/Takeda in the last 3 years; receives authorship royalties from Oxford Press and ArtMed; received travel awards for taking part of 2016 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and 2018 American Psychological Association (APA) meeting from Novartis and Shire. The ADHD and Juvenile Bipolar Disorder Outpatient Programs chaired by him received unrestricted educational and research support from the following pharmaceutical companies in the last 3 years: Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Medice, Novartis, and Shire. VM has received research funding from Johnson & Johnson, a pharmaceutical company interested in the development of anti-inflammatory strategies for depression, but the research described in this paper is unrelated to this funding. The other authors report no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in three major networks of a sample of adolescents with major depressive disorder (n = 29). A) Default mode network showing positive connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex, the angular gyrus, and the posterior cingulate cortex. B) Salience network exhibiting positive connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. C, D) Right and left lateral prefrontal cortex, respectively, highlighting positive connectivity with the dorsal parietal cortex in the cognitive control network. Connectivity is shown in color according to the color-graded scale attached to each image (blue means decreased connectivity and red means increased connectivity).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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