White Matter Network Disruption Is Associated With Melancholic Features in Major Depressive Disorder

Mengxin He; Yuqi Cheng; Zhaosong Chu; Xin Wang; Jinlei Xu; Yi Lu; Zonglin Shen; Xiufeng Xu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.816191

White Matter Network Disruption Is Associated With Melancholic Features in Major Depressive Disorder

Front Psychiatry. 2022 Apr 14:13:816191. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.816191. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Mengxin He^{1

2}, Yuqi Cheng^{1

2}, Zhaosong Chu^{1

2}, Xin Wang¹, Jinlei Xu¹, Yi Lu³, Zonglin Shen^{1

2

4}, Xiufeng Xu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China.
² Yunnan Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders, Kunming, China.
³ Department of Medical Imaging, First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China.
⁴ Mental Health Institute of Yunnan, First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China.

Abstract

Background: The efficacy and prognosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) are limited by its heterogeneity. MDD with melancholic features is an important subtype of MDD. The present study aimed to reveal the white matter (WM) network changes in melancholic depression.

Materials and methods: Twenty-three first-onset, untreated melancholic MDD, 59 non-melancholic MDD patients and 63 health controls underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans. WM network analysis based on graph theory and support vector machine (SVM) were used for image data analysis.

Results: Compared with HC, small-worldness was reduced and abnormal node attributes were in the right orbital inferior frontal gyrus, left orbital superior frontal gyrus, right caudate nucleus, right orbital superior frontal gyrus, right orbital middle frontal gyrus, left rectus gyrus, and left median cingulate and paracingulate gyrus of MDD patients. Compared with non-melancholic MDD, small-worldness was reduced and abnormal node attributes were in right orbital inferior frontal gyrus, left orbital superior frontal gyrus and right caudate nucleus of melancholic MDD. For correlation analysis, the 7th item score of the HRSD-17 (work and interest) was positively associated with increased node betweenness centrality (aBC) values in right orbital inferior frontal gyrus, while negatively associated with the decreased aBC in left orbital superior frontal gyrus. SVM analysis results showed that abnormal aBC in right orbital inferior frontal gyrus and left orbital superior frontal gyrus showed the highest accuracy of 81.0% (69/83), the sensitivity of 66.3%, and specificity of 85.2% for discriminating MDD patients with or without melancholic features.

Conclusion: There is a significant difference in WM network changes between MDD patients with and without melancholic features.

Keywords: WM network; diffusion tensor imaging; melancholic depression; non-melancholic depression; small-world.