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A specific pattern of gray matter atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease with depression

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Abstract

Considering the high incidence of depressive symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we conducted a large-sample study to investigate the pattern of gray matter (GM) abnormalities that differentiates depressive from non-depressive AD patients. We included 201 AD patients who underwent MRI assessment and categorized them into depressive and non-depressive subgroups based on the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; cut-off score: ≤9). We performed whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analysis in 173 patients after MRI quality control and used between-group comparisons and regression analysis models to analyze the volumetric data controlling for nuisance variables. Depressive AD patients had extensive GM volume loss mainly in the paracentral region, specifically in post- and pre-central gyrus, supplementary motor areas and thalamus compared to non-depressive patients. Similar findings were obtained for the group of 173 patients using regression analysis and GDS score as predictor variable. We provided the first clear demonstration of a unique pattern of GM atrophy that characterizes AD patients with depression which is consistent with regions implicated in the phenomenon of psychomotor retardation that characterizes depression.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all patients for their willingness to participate in the present study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Second Department of Radiology, University General Hospital ‘Attikon’, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 19 Papadiamantopoulou Street, Athens, 11528, Greece

    Efstratios Karavasilis

  2. Department of Medical Physics, Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis, Greece

    Efstratios Karavasilis & Ioannis Seimenis

  3. 3rd Age Day Care Center IASIS, Glyfada, Greece

    Theodore P. Parthimos & John D. Papatriantafyllou

  4. Second Department of Neurology, University General Hospital ‘Attikon’, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Sokratis G. Papageorgiou

  5. Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    George Kapsas

  6. Division of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Pediatrics, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, USA

    Andrew C. Papanicolaou

  7. Neuroscience Institute, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Memphis, USA

    Andrew C. Papanicolaou

  8. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, USA

    Andrew C. Papanicolaou

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  1. Efstratios Karavasilis
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  2. Theodore P. Parthimos
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  4. Sokratis G. Papageorgiou
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Correspondence to Efstratios Karavasilis.

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Karavasilis, E., Parthimos, T.P., Papatriantafyllou, J.D. et al. A specific pattern of gray matter atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease with depression. J Neurol 264, 2101–2109 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-017-8603-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-017-8603-z

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