Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESReduced Anterior Cingulate Cortex Glutamatergic Concentrations in Childhood Major Depression
Section snippets
Subjects
This research investigation was approved by the Wayne State University Human Investigation Committee. All legal guardians provided written informed consent and all children gave written assent before initiating studies and after having understood all issues involved in participation in the study protocol. Thirteen psychotropic drug-naïve, right-hand-dominant child and adolescent outpatients with MDD and 13 healthy comparison subjects matched for age, gender, weight, height, handedness, and
RESULTS
A significant decrease (19%) in Glx was observed in the anterior cingulate cortex (t24 = 4.01, p = .000; F1,22 = 16.50, p = .001) but not in the occipital cortex (t18 = 0.97, p = .344; F1,17 = 0.99, p = .333) in MDD patients versus controls (Fig. 3, Table 2). Reduced anterior cingulate Glx in MDD patients was inversely correlated with increased functional impairment as measured by the CGI-S (r = −0.66, p = .021) but was not correlated with depressive symptom score as measured by the CDRS-R or
Clinical Implications
To our knowledge, this is the first neuroimaging study of children with MDD demonstrating localized decreased anterior cingulate Glx concentrations. These findings replicate and extend the findings of Auer et al. (2000) and Pfleiderer et al. (2003) in studies that demonstrated reduced anterior cingulate Glx concentrations in severely depressed unipolar adults. Our study provides important new data about disturbances in anterior cingulate Glx neurotransmission without the potential confounds of
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This work was supported in part by the State of Michigan Joe F. Young Sr. Psychiatric Research and Training Program, grants from NIMH (MH65122, MH59299, MH02037), NARSAD, and the Miriam L. Hamburger Endowed Chair at Children's Hospital of Michigan and Wayne State University.