The Interaction Effects of Suicidal Ideation and Childhood Abuse on Brain Structure and Function in Major Depressive Disorder Patients

Abstract

Suicidal ideation (SI) is a direct risk factor for suicide in patients with depression. Regarding the emergence of SI, previous studies have discovered many risk factors, including childhood abuse as the major public problem. Previous imaging studies have demonstrated that SI or childhood abuse has effects on brain structure and function, respectively, but the interaction effects between them have not been fully studied. To explore the interaction effect between SI and childhood abuse, 215 patients with major depressive disorder completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire to evaluate childhood abuse and Beck’s Scale for Suicidal Ideation to evaluate SI. Then, they completed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within one week after completing questionnaires. Respectively, we preprocessed the structural and functional images and analyzed gray matter volumes (GMV) and mean fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (mfALFF) values. Results showed that the changes of GMV in the cuneus, precuneus, paracentric lobule, inferior frontal gyrus, and caudate nucleus and local activity in cuneal and middle temporal gyrus are in relation with SI and childhood abuse. And in left caudate, SI and childhood abuse interact with each other on the influence of GMV. That is, the influence of SI in GMV was related to childhood abuse, and the influence of childhood abuse in GMV was also related to SI. Therefore, the combination of SI and childhood abuse based on imaging should help us better understand the suicide ideation developing mechanism and propose more effective targeted prevention strategies for suicide prevention.

The effects of childhood maltreatment on cortical thickness and gray matter volume: a coordinate-based meta-analysis

“…A total of 295 records were identified through database searches. Forty-five studies were eligible for inclusion, of which eight were CTh studies based on SBM (Bounoua, Miglin, Spielberg, & Sadeh, 2020; Cascino et al, 2022; Corbo et al, 2014; Jaworska et al, 2014; Kelly et al, 2013, 2016; Lim et al, 2018; Ross et al, 2021), 34 were GMV studies based on VBM (Benedetti et al, 2012; Brito et al, 2013; Carballedo et al, 2012; Carrion et al, 2009; Chaney et al, 2014; Dam, Rando, Potenza, Tuit, & Sinha, 2014; Daniels et al, 2019; Duarte et al, 2016; Everaerd et al, 2016; Fan et al, 2022; Grabe et al, 2016; Harmelen et al, 2010; Kelly et al, 2015; Kuhn et al, 2016; Labudda et al, 2013; Liao et al, 2013; Lu et al, 2013, 2018, 2019; Maier et al, 2020; Mielke et al, 2016, 2018; Opel et al, 2016, 2019; Rinne-Albers et al, 2017; Sheffield, Williams, Woodward, & Heckers, 2013; Thomaes et al, 2010; Tomoda et al, 2009a, 2009b, 2011; Tomoda, Polcari, Anderson, & Teicher, 2012; Walsh et al, 2014; Wang et al, 2021; Yang et al, 2017), and 3 conducted both SBM and VBM analyses (Gao et al, 2022; Lim & Khor, 2022; Rinne-Albers et al, 2020). Among the VBM studies, two study both included two subgroups (Carballedo et al, 2012; Everaerd et al, 2016).…”

Altered gray matter volumes and plasma IL-6 level in major depressive disorder patients with suicidal ideation

“…Due to the small number of studies on MDD + S populations and the negative results, we discussed the relationship of SI with GMV and IL-6, expecting to find some evidence. Changes of GMVs in several cortical and subcortical structures were linked to SI ( Wang et al, 2021 ). Besides, the decreased GMVs of dorsal striatum predicted self-associations with death, namely the implicit SI ( Ho et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Many findings about the impaired gray matter volumes (GMVs) in MDD + S have been reported. For example, previous studies had shown that the reductions of GMVs in the bilateral caudate nucleus, right nucleus accumbens ( Ho et al, 2021 ), dorsal striatum ( Ho et al, 2018 ), the lingual gyrus ( Wang et al, 2021 ), right insula ( Ge et al, 2021 ), bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex ( Zhang et al, 2020 ) were related to SI in MDD patients. In addition, gray matter thickness, an indicator related to GMVs, also found a specific change in MDD + S. For example, Taylor.…”

Abnormal degree centrality in first-episode medication-free adolescent depression at rest: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study and support vector machine analysis

“…All resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) scans were performed with a 3.0T General Electric scanner at the PET center of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University using previously described methods ( 31 ). Briefly, participants were directed to lie in the supine position with their eyes closed while remaining awake and motionless.…”