NeuroImage: Clinical (Jan 2020)

Biotypes of major depressive disorder: Neuroimaging evidence from resting-state default mode network patterns

  • Sugai Liang,
  • Wei Deng,
  • Xiaojing Li,
  • Andrew J. Greenshaw,
  • Qiang Wang,
  • Mingli Li,
  • Xiaohong Ma,
  • Tong-Jian Bai,
  • Qi-Jing Bo,
  • Jun Cao,
  • Guan-Mao Chen,
  • Wei Chen,
  • Chang Cheng,
  • Yu-Qi Cheng,
  • Xi-Long Cui,
  • Jia Duan,
  • Yi-Ru Fang,
  • Qi-Yong Gong,
  • Wen-Bin Guo,
  • Zheng-Hua Hou,
  • Lan Hu,
  • Li Kuang,
  • Feng Li,
  • Kai-Ming Li,
  • Yan-Song Liu,
  • Zhe-Ning Liu,
  • Yi-Cheng Long,
  • Qing-Hua Luo,
  • Hua-Qing Meng,
  • Dai-Hui Peng,
  • Hai-Tang Qiu,
  • Jiang Qiu,
  • Yue-Di Shen,
  • Yu-Shu Shi,
  • Tian-Mei Si,
  • Chuan-Yue Wang,
  • Fei Wang,
  • Kai Wang,
  • Li Wang,
  • Xiang Wang,
  • Ying Wang,
  • Xiao-Ping Wu,
  • Xin-Ran Wu,
  • Chun-Ming Xie,
  • Guang-Rong Xie,
  • Hai-Yan Xie,
  • Peng Xie,
  • Xiu-Feng Xu,
  • Hong Yang,
  • Jian Yang,
  • Hua Yu,
  • Jia-Shu Yao,
  • Shu-Qiao Yao,
  • Ying-Ying Yin,
  • Yong-Gui Yuan,
  • Yu-Feng Zang,
  • Ai-Xia Zhang,
  • Hong Zhang,
  • Ke-Rang Zhang,
  • Zhi-Jun Zhang,
  • Jing-Ping Zhao,
  • Ru-Bai Zhou,
  • Yi-Ting Zhou,
  • Chao-Jie Zou,
  • Xi-Nian Zuo,
  • Chao-Gan Yan,
  • Tao Li

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28
p. 102514

Abstract

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Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is heterogeneous disorder associated with aberrant functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN). This study focused on data-driven identification and validation of potential DMN-pattern-based MDD subtypes to parse heterogeneity of the disorder. Methods: The sample comprised 1397 participants including 690 patients with MDD and 707 healthy controls (HC) registered from multiple sites based on the REST-meta-MDD Project in China. Baseline resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data was recorded for each participant. Discriminative features were selected from DMN between patients and HC. Patient subgroups were defined by K-means and principle component analysis in the multi-site datasets and validated in an independent single-site dataset. Statistical significance of resultant clustering were confirmed. Demographic and clinical variables were compared between identified patient subgroups. Results: Two MDD subgroups with differing functional connectivity profiles of DMN were identified in the multi-site datasets, and relatively stable in different validation samples. The predominant dysfunctional connectivity profiles were detected among superior frontal cortex, ventral medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, whereas one subgroup exhibited increases of connectivity (hyperDMN MDD) and another subgroup showed decreases of connectivity (hypoDMN MDD). The hyperDMN subgroup in the discovery dataset had age-related severity of depressive symptoms. Patient subgroups had comparable demographic and clinical symptom variables. Conclusions: Findings suggest the existence of two neural subtypes of MDD associated with different dysfunctional DMN connectivity patterns, which may provide useful evidence for parsing heterogeneity of depression and be valuable to inform the search for personalized treatment strategies.

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