Abstract
BackgroundMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is a known major risk factor for suicide and is one of the most common mental disorders. Meanwhile, gender differences in suicidal behavior have long been recognized including the finding that women have higher rates of suicidal ideation and/or suicidal behavior than men. The mechanism underlying suicide ideation in female patients with MDD remains poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to examine possible suicidal behavior-related neural circuitry in female MDD.MethodsIn this study, 15 female participants with the first-episode MDD with suicidal ideation and 24 participants with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation as well as 39 female participants in a healthy control (HC) group, ranging in age from 18 to 50 years, underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The whole-brain amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) was compared among these three groups.ResultsCompared with female participants with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation and those in the HC group, female participants with the first-episode MDD with suicidal ideation showed a significant difference in rsFC between the amygdala and precuneus/cuneus (p < 0.05, corrected). No significant difference in amygdala–precuneus/cuneus rsFC was observed between female patients with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation and the HC group (p < 0.05, corrected).ConclusionsOur findings suggest that suicidal ideation in female patients with the first-episode MDD may be related to an abnormality in amygdala neural circuitry. The abnormality in amygdala–precuneus/cuneus functional connectivity might present the trait feature for suicide in women with the first-episode MDD. The precuneus/cuneus may be an important region related to suicide and require future study.
Highlights
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a known major risk factor for suicide and is one of the most common mental disorders
Demographics and clinical characteristics Following the Beck 19-item Scale for Suicide Ideation, we identified 15 female participants with suicidal ideation and 24 female participants without suicidal ideation
Post hoc analyses showed higher Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) scores in female participants in the MDD with suicidal ideation and MDD without suicidal ideation groups compared with HAMD scores in the healthy control (HC) group
Summary
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a known major risk factor for suicide and is one of the most common mental disorders. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a known major risk factor for suicide and is one of the most common mental disorders [1], with a lifetime incidence of 17.1% [2]. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [8,9,10,11,12] and functional MRI [13] studies have demonstrated brain abnormalities in people with MDD who exhibit suicidal. The previous studies have shown that abnormalities of volume and connectivity of amygdala were associated with the mechanisms of suicide in people with MDD [24, 25]. The previous study showed a negative result of amygdala morphometric difference in suicidal patients [27] and another study is the lack of correlation between suicidal ideation and amygdala–precuneus RSFC in adolescents [28]
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