• 作者：Lei Li^a ; ¹ ; Du Lei^a ; Lingjiang Li^b ; Xiaoqi Huang^a ; Xueling Suo^a ; Fenglai Xiao^c ; ^d ; ^e ; Weihong Kuang^c ; ^d ; ^e ; Jin Li^c ; ^d ; ^e ; Feng Bi^c ; ^d ; ^e ; Su Lui^a ; Graham J. Kemp^f ; John A. Sweeney^a ; ^g ; Qiyong Gong^a ; ^{qiyonggong@hmrrc.org.cn" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Posttraumatic stress disorder ; Mental disorders ; Diffusion tensor imaging ; Magnetic resonance imaging ; Neuroimaging ; Psychoradiology
• 刊名：EBioMedicine
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：February 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：4
• 期：Complete
• 页码：176-183
• 全文大小：638 K

•

We investigated white matter integrity in a large medication-free PTSD population.

•

We included PTSD patients following a specific single traumatic event.

•

FA increase was noted in prefrontal cortex and corpus callosum in PTSD patients.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious and common psychiatric illness. Most previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in PTSD have investigated white matter alterations in chronically ill and treated patients who experienced stressors variable in their intensity and duration. They also used non-traumatized individuals as controls, which makes it difficult to isolate PTSD-specific abnormalities from general stress effects. We describe a DTI study in a large drug-naive cohort of PTSD patients with the unique characteristics of a single-incident external trauma event, which offers a valuable opportunity for elucidating the core pathophysiology of PTSD. Our study showed that, relative to similarly stressed controls, PTSD patients had a significant fractional anisotropy increase, as well as axial and radial diffusivity alterations in the white matter beneath left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and forceps major. Our findings help define clinically relevant PTSD-related white matter abnormalities in patients with a relatively short disease duration, suggesting that disruptions in dorsolateral prefrontal circuitry may be a contributing factor to fear-extinction deficits in PTSD.