Autor:innen:
Jonathan Repple, Münster (Germany)
Marius Gruber, Muenster (Germany)
Marco Mauritz, Muenster (Germany)
Susanne Meinert, Muenster (Germany)
Katharina Thiel, Muenster (Germany)
Lena Waltemate, Muenster (Germany)
Andreas Jansen, Marburg (Germany)
Igor Nenadic, Marburg (Germany)
Tilo T. J. Kircher, Marburg (Germany)
Udo Dannlowski, Muenster (Germany)
Introduction: Altered brain structural connectivity has been implicated in the pathophysiology of a range of psychotic disorders including schizophrenia (SZ) and affective disorders such as bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it is unknown whether and if so to what extend these connectome abnormalities are disorder-specific or shared across the spectrum of psychotic and affective disorders. We investigated common and distinct structural connectome alterations in a large sample (n= 1743) of SZ, BD and MDD patients and healthy controls (HC).
Methods: This study examines diffusion-tensor-imaging-based structural connectome topology in 69 SZ patients (mean age: 37.7 years), 112 bipolar patients (mean age: 40.9), 720 MDD patients (mean age: 36.6 years) and 432 healthy controls (35.6 years). Graph-theory based network analysis was employed to investigate network measures. Post-hoc analyses via network-based-statistics were employed to investigate which subnetworks drove global group differences.
Results: Groups differed significantly in the network metrics global efficiency, clustering, present edges and global connectivity strength with a converging pattern of alterations between diagnoses (e.g. efficiency: HC>MDD>BD>SZ). Impaired efficiency was the result of a reduction in present edges, especially in SZ patients. Dysconnectivity was most pronounced in patients with an early disease onset regardless of diagnosis.
Conclusion: We demonstrate shared and unique patterns of dysconnectivity in SZ, BD and MDD, leading to common reduced communication efficiency across these disorders with most pronounced effects in SZ. These results demonstrate shared compromised brain communication across a spectrum of major psychiatric disorders, potentially resulting from shared network changes across SZ, BP and MDD.