Brain regions associated with vulnerability and resilience to bipolar disorder: 6 years follow up study with voxel based morphometry in bipolar patients and their healthy siblings
Project no. 33 · Status: Kapanmış · 2016
Summary
It is unclear whether the structural abnormalities seen in bipolar disorder are the cause or consequence of the illness. It may be argued that these abnormalities may be predisposing factors if the structural abnormalities are seen both in patients and their healthy relatives. On the other hand, there is possibility that these abnormalities may be resistance factors to the illness if the structural abnormalities are seen only in healthy siblings but not bipolar patients or healthy controls. Therefore, it is suggested to conduct studies comparing the patients with their healthy relatives and unrelated healthy controls. For this reason, we included bipolar patients (N=11), their healthy siblings (N=11), and unrelated healthy controls (N=11) in our study and compared magnetic resonance images using ANCOVA in SPM 8 with voxel based morphometry analysis with age, sex and intracranial volume as co-factors. Bipolar disorder patients had greater volumes in right and left temporal pole than healthy controls. Bipolar disorder patients had smaller volumes in right superior temporal gyrus and right inferior occipital cortex than healthy controls. Bipolar disorder patients had smaller volumes in right superior parietal gyrus, right superior temporal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, right posterior cingulate cortex, right fusiform gyrus and left temporal pole than their healthy siblings. healthy siblings had larger right and left temporal pole; left inferior frontal gyrus and left premotor area than healthy controls. These results suggest that right and left temporal pole structures may be related to bipolarity vulnerability while left inferior frontal gyrus and left premotor area may be associated with resistance to bipolar illness. Although our aim was to investigate our cohort with a six years period, the problems encountered during recruitment process prevented us from reaching our goals.