Independent studies on major depressive disorder (MDD) and hypertension, suggest overlapping abnormalities in brain regions associated with emotional and autonomic processing. However, the unique and interactive effects of MDD and hypertension have never been studied in a single sample. Brain volume in these areas may be an explanatory link in the comorbidity between MDD and hypertension. Voxel-based morphometry was used to test for main effects of MDD (N = 152) and hypertension (N = 82) and their interactions on gray and white matter volumes. Voxel-wise results are reported at p < .05 FWE corrected for the spatial extent of the whole brain and a-priori regions of interest (ROIs: hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)). In addition, analyses on the extracted total volumes of our ROIs were performed. Interactive effects in the mid-cingulate cortex (MCC) (p FWE = .01), cerebellum (p FWE = .01) and in the ACC total ROI volume (p = .02) were found. MDD in the presence, but not in the absence of hypertension was associated with lower volumes in the ACC and MCC, and with a trend towards larger gray matter volume in the cerebellum. No associations with white matter volumes were observed. Results suggest that the combination of MDD and hypertension has a unique effect on brain volumes in areas implicated in the regulation of emotional and autonomic functions. Brain volume in these regulatory areas may be an explanatory link in the comorbidity between hypertension and MDD.
Keywords: Blood pressure; Comorbidity; Depression; Gray matter; Hypertension; MRI.