TY - JOUR
T1 - Magnetization transfer imaging alterations and its diagnostic value in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode schizophrenia
AU - Lei, Du
AU - Suo, Xueling
AU - Qin, Kun
AU - Pinaya, Walter H.L.
AU - Ai, Yuan
AU - Li, Wenbin
AU - Kuang, Weihong
AU - Lui, Su
AU - Kemp, Graham J.
AU - Sweeney, John A.
AU - Gong, Qiyong
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 81820108018) awarded to Profs. QG and JAS, and (Grants 81621003, 81761128023, and 82027808) to QG. JAS also receives support from the University of Cincinnati Schizophrenia Research Fund. WHLP is supported by Wellcome Innovations [WT213038/Z/18/Z].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) may provide more sensitivity and mechanistic understanding of neuropathological changes associated with schizophrenia than volumetric MRI. This study aims to identify brain magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) changes in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode schizophrenia (FES), and to correlate MTR findings with clinical symptom severity. A total of 143 individuals with antipsychotic-naïve FES and 147 healthy controls (HCs) were included and underwent 3.0 T brain MTI between August 2005 and July 2014. Voxelwise analysis was performed to test for MTR differences with family-wise error corrections. Relationships of these differences to symptom severity were assessed using partial correlations. Exploratory analyses using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier were conducted to discriminate FES from HCs using MTR maps. Model performance was examined using a 10-fold stratified cross-validation. Compared with HCs, individuals with FES exhibited higher MTR values in left thalamus, precuneus, cuneus, and paracentral lobule, that were positively correlated with schizophrenia symptom severity [precuneus (r = 0.34, P = 0.0004), cuneus (r = 0.33, P = 0.0006) and paracentral lobule (r = 0.37, P = 0.001)]. Whole-brain MTR maps identified individuals with FES with overall accuracy 75.5% (219 of 290 individuals) based on SVM approach. In antipsychotic-naïve FES, clinically relevant biophysical abnormalities detected by MTI mainly in the left parieto-occipital regions are informative about local brain pathology, and have potential as diagnostic markers.
AB - Magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) may provide more sensitivity and mechanistic understanding of neuropathological changes associated with schizophrenia than volumetric MRI. This study aims to identify brain magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) changes in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode schizophrenia (FES), and to correlate MTR findings with clinical symptom severity. A total of 143 individuals with antipsychotic-naïve FES and 147 healthy controls (HCs) were included and underwent 3.0 T brain MTI between August 2005 and July 2014. Voxelwise analysis was performed to test for MTR differences with family-wise error corrections. Relationships of these differences to symptom severity were assessed using partial correlations. Exploratory analyses using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier were conducted to discriminate FES from HCs using MTR maps. Model performance was examined using a 10-fold stratified cross-validation. Compared with HCs, individuals with FES exhibited higher MTR values in left thalamus, precuneus, cuneus, and paracentral lobule, that were positively correlated with schizophrenia symptom severity [precuneus (r = 0.34, P = 0.0004), cuneus (r = 0.33, P = 0.0006) and paracentral lobule (r = 0.37, P = 0.001)]. Whole-brain MTR maps identified individuals with FES with overall accuracy 75.5% (219 of 290 individuals) based on SVM approach. In antipsychotic-naïve FES, clinically relevant biophysical abnormalities detected by MTI mainly in the left parieto-occipital regions are informative about local brain pathology, and have potential as diagnostic markers.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129634147&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41398-022-01939-5
DO - 10.1038/s41398-022-01939-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 35523792
AN - SCOPUS:85129634147
SN - 2158-3188
VL - 12
JO - Translational psychiatry
JF - Translational psychiatry
IS - 1
M1 - 189
ER -