A growing number of studies have used neuroimaging to further our understanding of how brain structure and function are altered in major depression. More recently, these techniques have begun to show promise for the diagnosis and treatment of depression, both as aids to conventional methods and as methods in their own right. In this review, we describe recent neuroimaging findings in the field that might aid diagnosis and improve treatment accuracy. Overall, major depression is associated with numerous structural and functional differences in neural systems involved in emotion processing and mood regulation. Furthermore, several studies have shown that the structure and function of these systems is changed by pharmacological and psychological treatments of the condition and that these changes in candidate brain regions might predict clinical response. More recently, “machine learning” methods have used neuroimaging data to categorize individual patients according to their diagnostic status and predict treatment response. Despite being mostly limited to group-level comparisons at present, with the introduction of new methods and more naturalistic studies, neuroimaging has the potential to become part of the clinical armamentarium and may improve diagnostic accuracy and inform treatment choice at the patient level.

La periodontitis es una enfermedad inflamatoria infecciosa que involucra una respuesta inmune del hospedero y se caracteriza por destrucción del hueso alveolar, el objetivo del estudio es analizar la expresión de citoquinas Th17 y su correlación con periodontopatógenos y el área periodontal inflamada en pacientes con periodontitis crónica. Método: Se realizó un estudio descriptivo exploratorio en el que se reclutaron 23 pacientes con diagnóstico de periodontitis crónica y un grupo control de 10 individuos sano/gingivitis. A todos los sujetos se les realizó un examen periodontal completo. Además, se utilizó el método PISA (Periodontal Inflamed Surface Area) para cuantificar el tamaño de la herida periodontal. Se recolectaron muestras de FGC, plasma y placa bacteriana para su análisis mediante técnica de ELISA de IL-17 A, IL-6, IL-23 y IL-10 y PCR para la determinación de la presencia de: P. gingivalis, T. denticola, T. forsythensis, A. actinomycetemcomitans, F. nucleatum y P. intermedia. Los datos fueron analizados utilizando estadística descriptiva y la asociación entre variables se estimó a través de modelos de regresión logística. Resultados: Se observó una tendencia al aumento, no significativa, de los niveles de IL-17A, IL-6 y IL-23 a nivel de FGC en los sujetos con periodontitis crónica (p=0.716, 0.784, 0.421, respectivamente). Los pacientes con periodontitis crónica presentaron una disminución de la IL-10 (p=0.012) y los niveles de IL-17A se correlacionaron positivamente con el área periodontal inflamada (p=0.004). A nivel de los patógenos periodontales, se observó una asociación entre la presencia de: P. gingivalis, T. denticola, T. forsythensis y los niveles de IL-6 plasmática (p=0.017, 0.033, 0.024, respectivamente).

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The development of human brain imaging has resulted in a number of techniques that allow unprecedented insights into the in vivo metabolic and neurochemical processes of the brain. Single positron emission cerebral tomography (SPECT) is a nuclear medicine technique that can be used for measuring perfusion and blood flow in patients affected with psychopathology. The aim of the study was to compare sole depressed patients and those with comorbid alcohol dependence in terms of the functional alterations detected by single positron emission scan (SPECT). For this, 27 SPECT imaging studies performed at Hospital Clínico Pontificia Universidad Católica, of selected patients, were collected and categorized by group. First group composed by depressed patients and second group of patients having alcohol dependence in addition to depression. Selected studies were corregistered, normalized and smoothed for standarization before statistic analysis was performed using MatLan7.1 software with SPM5 module. Mean blood flow in brain areas were compared between groups, with significant statistical difference at p<0.01.Results show significantly less blood flow in the group with alcohol dependence in Brodmann Areas 4,6,8,9,45and46 of the frontal lobe and BrodmannAreas 2,3,4,5,7and40 of the parietal lobe (p<0.01). Furthermore, the group with alcohol dependence showed increased blood flow in frontal lobe's Brodmann Area 10, temporal lobe's Brodmann Areas 13,20,22, cerebellum, uncus and thalamus.(p<0.01). We conclude that alcohol dependence as comorbid condition in depressed patients determines an additional decrease in the mean blood flow of prefrontal and temporal lobes.