Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access first published online on September 21, 2009
This version published online on October 29, 2009
Schizophrenia Bulletin, doi:10.1093/schbul/sbp088
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Global White Matter Abnormalities in Schizophrenia: A Multisite Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study
2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55454
3 Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Minneapolis, MN 55455
4 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus University, 3000 CB Rotterdam, the Netherlands
5 Department of Radiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
6 The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM 87106
7 Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02129
8 Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02129
9 Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
10 Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106
11 Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106
12 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106
13 Department of Psychiatry, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65212
14 Minneapolis Veterans Administration Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN 55417
1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus MC-Sophia/kamer WK219, Dr. Molewaterplein 60, Postbus 2060, 3000 CB Rotterdam, the Netherlands; tel: +31 (0) 10 703-7072, fax: +31 (0) 10 463-2111, e-mail: t.white{at}erasmusmc.nl.
Background. Emerging evidence implicates white matter (WM) abnormalities in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the presentation of WM abnormalities in the existing studies. The object of this study was to evaluate WM integrity in a large sample of patients with first-episode (FE) and chronic schizophrenia in comparison to matched control groups. Our goal was to assess whether WM findings occurred early in the illness or whether these abnormalities developed with the illness over time. Methods. Participants included 114 patients with schizophrenia (31 FE and 83 chronic patients) and 138 matched controls. High-resolution structural and diffusion tensor images were obtained on all participants. Measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) were calculated for the 4 cortical lobes and the cerebellum and brain stem. Results. FA was significant lower in patients vs controls in the whole brain and individually in the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. FA was not significantly different in the brain stem or cerebellum. FA differences were significant only in patients with chronic schizophrenia and not in the FE group. Conclusions. We found global differences in the WM microstructure in patients with chronic but not FE schizophrenia. These findings suggest progressive alterations in WM microstructure.
Keywords: first-episode schizophrenia / fractional anisotropy / neuroimaging / DTI / microstructure
In the Image Acquisition and Processing section, the square root term in the numerator of the equation was corrected to extend the entire numerator.