Sub-hubs of baseline functional brain networks are related to early improvement following two-week pharmacological therapy for major depressive disorder.
Accumulating evidence suggests that early improvement after two-week antidepressant treatment is predictive of later outcomes of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD); however, whether this early improvement is associated with baseline neural architecture remains largely unknown. Utilizing resting-state functional MRI data and graph-based network approaches, this study calculated voxel-wise degree centrality maps for 24 MDD patients at baseline and linked them with changes in the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) scores after two weeks of medication. Six clusters exhibited significant correlations of their baseline degree centrality with treatment-induced HAMD changes for the patients, which were mainly categorized into the posterior default-mode network (i.e., the left precuneus, supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and right angular gyrus) and frontal regions. Receiver operating characteristic curve and logistic regression analyses convergently revealed excellent performance of these regions in discriminating the early improvement status for the patients, especially the angular gyrus (sensitivity and specificity of 100%). Moreover, the angular gyrus was identified as the optimal regressor as determined by stepwise regression. Interestingly, these regions possessed higher centrality than others in the brain (P < 10(-3)) although they were not the most highly connected hubs. Finally, we demonstrate a high reproducibility of our findings across several factors (e.g., threshold choice, anatomical distance, and temporal cutting) in our analyses. Together, these preliminary exploratory analyses demonstrate the potential of neuroimaging-based network analysis in predicting the early therapeutic improvement of MDD patients and have important implications in guiding earlier personalized therapeutic regimens for possible treatment-refractory depression.
The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Yuedi
Y
Shen
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Jiashu
J
Yao
Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.|Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Xueyan
X
Jiang
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Lei
L
Zhang
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Luoyi
L
Xu
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Rui
R
Feng
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Liqiang
L
Cai
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Jing
J
Liu
Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.|Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Jinhui
J
Wang
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medical and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.|Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology of Chinese Ministry of Health, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Wei
W
Chen
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000928:Antidepressive Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000187:drug effects / Q000503:physiopathology; D012372:ROC Curve; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D055815:Young Adult
D000928:Antidepressive Agents
centrality; default-mode; depression; early improvement; fMRI; treatment