Altered white matter connectivity in never‐medicated patients with schizophrenia |
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Authors: | René C.W. Mandl Gertrudis Caroline M. van Baal Neeltje E.M. van Haren Wiepke Cahn René S. Kahn Hilleke E. Hulshoff Pol |
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Affiliation: | Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, , Utrecht, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | Numerous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have implicated white matter brain tissue abnormalities in schizophrenia. However, the vast majority of these studies included patient populations that use antipsychotic medication. Previous research showed that medication intake can affect brain morphology and the question therefore arises to what extent the reported white matter aberrations can be attributed to the disease rather than to the use of medication. In this study we included 16 medication‐naïve patients with schizophrenia and compared them to 23 healthy controls to exclude antipsychotic medication use as a confounding factor. For each subject DTI scans and magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) scans were acquired. A new tract‐based analysis was used that combines fractional anisoptropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD) and magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) to examine group differences in 12 major white matter fiber bundles. Significant group differences in combined FA, MD, MTR values were found for the right uncinate fasciculus and the left arcuate fasciculus. Additional analysis revealed that the largest part of both tracts showed an increase in MTR in combination with an increase in MD for patients with schizophrenia. We interpret these group‐related differences as disease‐related axonal or glial aberrations that cannot be attributed to antipsychotic medication use. Hum Brain Mapp 34:2353–2365, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
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Keywords: | schizophrenia white matter never‐medicated tract‐based analysis diffusion tensor imaging magnetization transfer MRI |
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