Correlation Between Serum High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein, Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha, Serum Interleukin-6 and White Matter Integrity Before and After the Treatment of Drug-Naïve Patients With Major Depressive Disorder

Liping Chen; Xiangling Zeng; Sijia Zhou; Zhiwen Gu; Jiyang Pan

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.948637

Correlation Between Serum High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein, Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha, Serum Interleukin-6 and White Matter Integrity Before and After the Treatment of Drug-Naïve Patients With Major Depressive Disorder

Front Neurosci. 2022 Jul 13:16:948637. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.948637. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Liping Chen¹, Xiangling Zeng^{2

3}, Sijia Zhou¹, Zhiwen Gu¹, Jiyang Pan⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Guangzhou First People's Hospital, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
² Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Guangzhou First People's Hospital, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Medical Imaging, Huizhou Municipal Central Hospital, Huizhou, China.
⁴ Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have noticed that systemic inflammation may alter the integrity of white matter. However, how the levels of serum cytokine affect the integrity of white matter in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients are unclear. Our study aimed to investigate the association between the inflammatory cytokine levels and white matter microstructure in drug-naïve patients with MDD pre- and post-treatment.

Method: In total, 29 MDD patients and 25 healthy controls (HC) were included in this study. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was conducted in all subjects at baseline, and the MDD patients were reassessed after venlafaxine treatment, using a tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis. Morning serum interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) concentrations in MDD patients were also measured pre- and post-treatment.

Results: Significantly reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) values were found in the bilateral superior fronto-occipital fasciculus (SFO), posterior limb of the internal capsule (IC-PL), and fornix compared with the HC, and FA values in these regions in MDD patients have risen to normal levels except the bilateral SFO after treatment. The FA value of the left IC-PL was inversely correlated with the peripheral hs-CRP levels in both pre- and post-treatment MDD patients.

Conclusion: Our results suggested that the white matter integrity in the left IC-PL was significantly inversely correlated with the peripheral hs-CRP levels in both pre- and post-treatment MDD patients.

Keywords: diffusion tensor imaging; high-sensitivity C-reactive protein; inflammation; major depressive disorder; white matter.