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. 2025 Jun;19(3):713-720.
doi: 10.1007/s11682-025-00983-1. Epub 2025 Apr 2.

Effects of polygenic risk for major depressive disorder and childhood emotional neglect on cortical blood flow complexity in young depression patients

Lijun Kang  1 , Qian Gong  1 , Wei Wang  1 , Zhaowen Nie  1 , Lihua Yao  1 , Dan Xiang  1 , Ning Tu  2 , Hongyan Feng  2 , Huiling Wang  1 , Gaohua Wang  1 , Lihong Bu  3 , Zhongchun Liu  4   5
Affiliations

Effects of polygenic risk for major depressive disorder and childhood emotional neglect on cortical blood flow complexity in young depression patients

Lijun Kang et al. Brain Imaging Behav. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) exhibits a moderate degree of heritability and shares common influences with early adverse life events, as well as being associated with inconsistent changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF). Here, we investigated whether MDD polygenic risk score (PRS) and emotional neglect influences alterations in CBF. We collected blood and ASL from MDD patients. Emotional neglect (EN) assessment was performed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. We calculated PRS for MDD based the MDD GWAS result in Asian populations. Subsequently, we examined the interaction between PRS for MDD and EN on CBF. Finally, 174 participated in statistical analysis. After adjusting for confounding factors, there was a significant main effect of PRS on left dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus, while the main effect of EN was not significantly (P < 0.001, GRF corrected). And significant interactive effect was found between PRS of MDD and EN on precuneus CBF (P < 0.001, GRF corrected). In MDD, high polygenic risk independently influenced changes in left dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus CBF, while EN plays a role in individuals with a higher genetic risk for MDD. Our study indicates the need to consider the combined effects of genetic risk and early adverse events on alterations in brain structure in the occurrence of MDD.

Keywords: Cortical blood flow; Dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus; Emotional neglect; Major depressive disorder; Polygenic risk.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethical approval: This experiment was examined and approved by the ethics committee of the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and all the participants were informed and agreed to participate in this study. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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