Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

LIVE: Thursday 27th June 2024, 18:00-19:30 (CEST)
Join our expert panel to discover why you need to understand the drivers of non-adherence in your patients, and how you can optimize medication adherence in your clinics to drastically improve patient outcomes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Published in: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 8/2016

Open Access 01-08-2016 | Original Contribution

Abnormalities of white matter integrity in the corpus callosum of adolescents with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse: a DTI study

Authors: Mirjam A. W. Rinne-Albers, Steven J. A. van der Werff, Marie-José van Hoof, Natasja D. van Lang, Francien Lamers-Winkelman, Serge A. Rombouts, Robert R. J. M. Vermeiren, Nic J. A. van der Wee

Published in: European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry | Issue 8/2016

Login to get access

Abstract

This study seeks to determine whether white matter integrity in the brain differs between adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and matched healthy adolescents and whether there is a relationship between white matter integrity and symptom severity in the patient group. Using 3T diffusion tensor imaging, we examined fractional anisotropy (FA) in a group of adolescents with CSA-related PTSD (n = 20) and matched healthy controls (n = 20), in a region of interest consisting of the bilateral uncinate fasciculus (UF), the genu, splenium and body of the corpus callosum (CC), and the bilateral cingulum. In addition, we performed an exploratory whole brain analysis. Trauma symptomatology was measured with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) to enable correlational analyses between FA differences and trauma symptomatology. The PTSD group had significantly lower FA values in the genu, midbody and splenium of the CC in comparison with controls (p < 0.05, tfce corrected). Post hoc analyses of the eigenvalues of the DTI scan showed increased radial and mean diffusivity in the patient group. In addition, we found a significant negative correlation between scores on the anger subscale of the TSCC and FA values in the left body of the CC in patients (p < 0.05). Adolescents with CSA-related PTSD show decreased FA in the CC, with abnormalities in the integrity of the left body of the CC being related to anger symptoms. These findings suggest that early trauma exposure affects the development of the CC, which may play a role in the pathophysiology of PTSD in adolescents.
Literature
1.
Anda RF, Felitti VJ, Bremner JD, Walker JD, Whitfield C, Perry BD, Dube SR, Giles WH (2006) The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood. A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 256:174–186CrossRefPubMed
2.
3.
Barakat LP, Kazak AE, Meadows AT, Casey R, Meeske K, Stuber ML (1997) Families surviving childhood cancer: a comparison of posttraumatic stress symptoms with families of healthy children. J Pediatr Psychol 22:843–859CrossRefPubMed
4.
Bond L, Clements J, Bertalli N, Evans-Whipp T, McMorris BJ, Patton GC, Toumbourou JW, Catalano RF (2006) A comparison of self-reported puberty using the Pubertal Development Scale and the Sexual Maturation Scale in a school-based epidemiologic survey. J Adolesc 29:709–720CrossRefPubMed
5.
Bremner JD (2007) Neuroimaging in posttraumatic stress disorder and other stress-related disorders. Neuroimaging Clin N Am 17:523–38, ix
6.
7.
Briere J (1996) Trauma Symptoms Checklist for Children (TSCC), Professional Manual. Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa
8.
9.
Chen CH, Ridler K, Suckling J, Williams S, Fu CH, Merlo-Pich E, Bullmore E (2007) Brain imaging correlates of depressive symptom severity and predictors of symptom improvement after antidepressant treatment. Biol Psychiatry 62:407–414CrossRefPubMed
10.
Cukor J, Wyka K, Jayasinghe N, Difede J (2010) The nature and course of subthreshold PTSD. J Anxiety Disord 24:918–923CrossRefPubMed
11.
Daniels JK, Lamke JP, Gaebler M, Walter H, Scheel M (2013) White matter integrity and its relationship to ptsd and childhood trauma–a systematic review and meta-analysis. Depress Anxiety 30:207–216CrossRefPubMed
12.
13.
De Bellis MD, Woolley DP, Hooper SR (2013) Neuropsychological findings in pediatric maltreatment: relationship of PTSD, dissociative symptoms, and abuse/neglect indices to neurocognitive outcomes. Child Maltreat 18:171–183CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
14.
Eluvathingal TJ, Chugani HT, Behen ME, Juhasz C, Muzik O, Maqbool M, Chugani DC, Makki M (2006) Abnormal brain connectivity in children after early severe socioemotional deprivation: a diffusion tensor imaging study. Pediatrics 117:2093–2100CrossRefPubMed
15.
Gibb BE, Chelminski I, Zimmerman M (2007) Childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and diagnoses of depressive and anxiety disorders in adult psychiatric outpatients. Depress Anxiety 24:256–263CrossRefPubMed
16.
Gilbertson MW, Shenton ME, Ciszewski A, Kasai K, Lasko NB, Orr SP, Pitman RK (2002) Smaller hippocampal volume predicts pathologic vulnerability to psychological trauma. Nat Neurosci 5:1242–1247CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
17.
Glascher J, Rudrauf D, Colom R, Paul LK, Tranel D, Damasio H, Adolphs R (2010) Distributed neural system for general intelligence revealed by lesion mapping. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:4705–4709CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
18.
Gustafsson PE, Nilsson D, Svedin CG (2009) Polytraumatization and psychological symptoms in children and adolescents. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 18:274–283CrossRefPubMed
19.
Herting MM, Maxwell EC, Irvine C, Nagel BJ (2012) The impact of sex, puberty, and hormones on white matter microstructure in adolescents. Cereb Cortex 22:1979–1992CrossRefPubMed
20.
Howell BR, McCormack KM, Grand AP, Sawyer NT, Zhang X, Maestripieri D, Hu X, Sanchez MM (2013) Brain white matter microstructure alterations in adolescent rhesus monkeys exposed to early life stress: associations with high cortisol during infancy. Biol Mood Anxiety Disord 3:21CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
21.
Huang H, Zhang J, Jiang H, Wakana S, Poetscher L, Miller MI, van Zijl PC, Hillis AE, Wytik R, Mori S (2005) DTI tractography based parcellation of white matter: application to the mid-sagittal morphology of corpus callosum. Neuroimage 26:195–205CrossRefPubMed
22.
Hulvershorn LA, Cullen K, Anand A (2011) Toward dysfunctional connectivity: a review of neuroimaging findings in pediatric major depressive disorder. Brain Imaging Behav 5:307–328CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
23.
Jackowski A, Perera TD, Abdallah CG, Garrido G, Tang CY, Martinez J, Mathew SJ, Gorman JM, Rosenblum LA, Smith EL, Dwork AJ, Shungu DC, Kaffman A, Gelernter J, Coplan JD, Kaufman J (2011) Early-life stress, corpus callosum development, hippocampal volumetrics, and anxious behavior in male nonhuman primates. Psychiatry Res 192:37–44CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
24.
Jackowski AP, Douglas-Palumberi H, Jackowski M, Win L, Schultz RT, Staib LW, Krystal JH, Kaufman J (2008) Corpus callosum in maltreated children with posttraumatic stress disorder: a diffusion tensor imaging study. Psychiatry Res 162:256–261CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
25.
Kaufman J, Plotsky PM, Nemeroff CB, Charney DS (2000) Effects of early adverse experiences on brain structure and function: clinical implications. Biol Psychiatry 48:778–790CrossRefPubMed
26.
Kessler RC, McLaughlin KA, Green JG, Gruber MJ, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Alhamzawi AO, Alonso J, Angermeyer M, Benjet C, Bromet E, Chatterji S, de Girolamo G, Demyttenaere K, Fayyad J, Florescu S, Gal G, Gureje O, Haro JM, Hu CY, Karam EG, Kawakami N, Lee S, Lepine JP, Ormel J, Posada-Villa J, Sagar R, Tsang A, Ustun TB, Vassilev S, Viana MC, Williams DR (2010) Childhood adversities and adult psychopathology in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Br J Psychiatry 197:378–385CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
27.
Kessler RC, Sonnega A, Bromet E, Hughes M, Nelson CB (1995) Posttraumatic stress disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey. Arch Gen Psychiatry 52:1048–1060CrossRefPubMed
28.
Koenen KC, Moffitt TE, Poulton R, Martin J, Caspi A (2007) Early childhood factors associated with the development of post-traumatic stress disorder: results from a longitudinal birth cohort. Psychol Med 37:181–192CrossRefPubMed
29.
Lanktree CB, Gilbert AM, Briere J, Taylor N, Chen K, Maida CA, Saltzman WR (2008) Multi-informant assessment of maltreated children: convergent and discriminant validity of the TSCC and TSCYC. Child Abuse Negl 32:621–625CrossRefPubMed
30.
31.
MacMillan HL, Fleming JE, Streiner DL, Lin E, Boyle MH, Jamieson E, Duku EK, Walsh CA, Wong MY, Beardslee WR (2001) Childhood abuse and lifetime psychopathology in a community sample. Am J Psychiatry 158:1878–1883CrossRefPubMed
32.
McCrory E, De Brito SA, Viding E (2010) Research review: the neurobiology and genetics of maltreatment and adversity. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 51:1079–1095CrossRefPubMed
33.
McNally RJ, Shin LM (1995) Association of intelligence with severity of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in Vietnam Combat veterans. Am J Psychiatry 152:936–938CrossRefPubMed
34.
Mori SWS, Nagae-Poetscher LM, van Zijl PCM (2005) MRI atlas of human white matter. Elsevier, Amsterdam
35.
Navas-Sanchez FJ, Aleman-Gomez Y, Sanchez-Gonzalez J, Guzman-De-Villoria JA, Franco C, Robles O, Arango C, Desco M (2014) White matter microstructure correlates of mathematical giftedness and intelligence quotient. Hum Brain Mapp 35:2619–2631CrossRefPubMed
36.
Nilsson D, Wadsby M, Svedin CG (2008) The psychometric properties of the Trauma Symptom Checklist For Children (TSCC) in a sample of Swedish children. Child Abuse Negl 32:627–636CrossRefPubMed
37.
Pechtel P, Pizzagalli DA (2011) Effects of early life stress on cognitive and affective function: an integrated review of human literature. Psychopharmacology 214:55–70CrossRefPubMed
38.
39.
Raine A, Lencz T, Taylor K, Hellige JB, Bihrle S, Lacasse L, Lee M, Ishikawa S, Colletti P (2003) Corpus callosum abnormalities in psychopathic antisocial individuals. Arch Gen Psychiatry 60:1134–1142CrossRefPubMed
40.
Rinne-Albers MA, van der Wee NJ, Lamers-Winkelman F, Vermeiren RR (2013) Neuroimaging in children, adolescents and young adults with psychological trauma. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 22(12):745–755CrossRefPubMed
41.
Sanchez MM, Ladd CO, Plotsky PM (2001) Early adverse experience as a developmental risk factor for later psychopathology: evidence from rodent and primate models. Dev Psychopathol 13:419–449CrossRefPubMed
42.
Schmithorst VJ, Wilke M, Dardzinski BJ, Holland SK (2005) Cognitive functions correlate with white matter architecture in a normal pediatric population: a diffusion tensor MRI study. Hum Brain Mapp 26:139–147CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
43.
Schmithorst VJ, Yuan W (2010) White matter development during adolescence as shown by diffusion MRI. Brain Cogn 72:16–25CrossRefPubMed
44.
Seckfort DL, Paul R, Grieve SM, Vandenberg B, Bryant RA, Williams LMCCR, Cohen RA, Bruce S, Gordon E (2008) Early life stress on brain structure and function across the lifespan: a preliminary study. Brain Imaging Behav 2:49–58CrossRef
45.
46.
Silverman WK, Ollendick TH (2005) Evidence-based assessment of anxiety and its disorders in children and adolescents. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 34:380–411CrossRefPubMed
47.
Silverman WK, Saavedra LM, Pina AA (2001) Test-retest reliability of anxiety symptoms and diagnoses with the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV: child and parent versions. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 40:937–944CrossRefPubMed
48.
Smith SM, Jenkinson M, Johansen-Berg H, Rueckert D, Nichols TE, Mackay CE, Watkins KE, Ciccarelli O, Cader MZ, Matthews PM, Behrens TE (2006) Tract-based spatial statistics: voxelwise analysis of multi-subject diffusion data. Neuroimage 31:1487–1505CrossRefPubMed
49.
Smith SM, Jenkinson M, Woolrich MW, Beckmann CF, Behrens TE, Johansen-Berg H, Bannister PR, De LM, Drobnjak I, Flitney DE, Niazy RK, Saunders J, Vickers J, Zhang Y, De SN, Brady JM, Matthews PM (2004) Advances in functional and structural MR image analysis and implementation as FSL. Neuroimage 23(Suppl 1):S208–S219CrossRefPubMed
50.
Smith SM, Nichols TE (2009) Threshold-free cluster enhancement: addressing problems of smoothing, threshold dependence and localisation in cluster inference. Neuroimage 44:83–98CrossRefPubMed
51.
Smith SM, Zhang Y, Jenkinson M, Chen J, Matthews PM, Federico A, De SN (2002) Accurate, robust, and automated longitudinal and cross-sectional brain change analysis. Neuroimage 17:479–489CrossRefPubMed
52.
Teicher MH, Andersen SL, Polcari A, Anderson CM, Navalta CP (2002) Developmental neurobiology of childhood stress and trauma. Psychiatr Clin North Am 25:397–viii
53.
Teicher MH, Dumont NL, Ito Y, Vaituzis C, Giedd JN, Andersen SL (2004) Childhood neglect is associated with reduced corpus callosum area. Biol Psychiatry 56:80–85CrossRefPubMed
54.
van der Werff SJ, Andela CD, Nienke PJ, Meijer OC, van Buchem MA, Rombouts SA, van der Mast RC, Biermasz NR, Pereira AM, van der Wee NJ (2014) Widespread reductions of white matter integrity in patients with long-term remission of Cushing’s disease. Neuroimage Clin 4:659–667CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
55.
van der Werff SJ, Pannekoek JN, Veer IM, van Tol MJ, Aleman A, Veltman DJ, Zitman FG, Rombouts SA, Elzinga BM, van der Wee NJ (2012) Resting-state functional connectivity in adults with childhood emotional maltreatment. Psychol Med 43(9):1825–1836CrossRefPubMed
56.
van Harmelen AL, van Tol MJ, van der Wee NJ, Veltman DJ, Aleman A, Spinhoven P, van Buchem MA, Zitman FG, Penninx BW, Elzinga BM (2010) Reduced medial prefrontal cortex volume in adults reporting childhood emotional maltreatment. Biol Psychiatry 68:832–838CrossRefPubMed
57.
van Hoof MJ, van Lang ND, Speekenbrink S, van IJzendoorn MH, Vermeiren RR (2015) Adult Attachment Interview differentiates adolescents with Childhood Sexual Abuse from those with clinical depression and non-clinical controls. Attach Hum Dev 17:354–375CrossRefPubMed
58.
Wechsler D (1991) Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The Psychological Corporation, San Antonio
59.
Wechsler D (1997) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The Psychological Corporation, San Antonio
60.
Woon FL, Hedges DW (2008) Hippocampal and amygdala volumes in children and adults with childhood maltreatment-related posttraumatic stress disorder: a meta-analysis. Hippocampus 18:729–736CrossRefPubMed
61.
Zhang J, Zhu X, Wang X, Gao J, Shi H, Huang B, Situ W, Yi J, Zhu X, Yao S (2014) Increased structural connectivity in corpus callosum in adolescent males with conduct disorder. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 53:466–475CrossRefPubMed
Metadata
Title
Abnormalities of white matter integrity in the corpus callosum of adolescents with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse: a DTI study
Authors
Mirjam A. W. Rinne-Albers
Steven J. A. van der Werff
Marie-José van Hoof
Natasja D. van Lang
Francien Lamers-Winkelman
Serge A. Rombouts
Robert R. J. M. Vermeiren
Nic J. A. van der Wee
Publication date
01-08-2016
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry / Issue 8/2016
Print ISSN: 1018-8827
Electronic ISSN: 1435-165X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-015-0805-2

Other articles of this Issue 8/2016

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 8/2016 Go to the issue

Original Contribution

Parents of children with psychopathology: psychiatric problems and the association with their child’s problems

Review

Voiding postponement in children—a systematic review

Original Contribution

Distinct relationships between social aptitude and dimensions of manic-like symptoms in youth

Original Contribution

Universal parent training as a supplement to inpatient psychiatric treatment for children and adolescents

Original Contribution

Variability in emotional/behavioral problems in boys with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder: the role of arousal

Original Contribution

Multi-dimensional Treatment Foster Care in England: differential effects by level of initial antisocial behaviour