Selective micro-structural integrity impairment of the isthmus subregion of the corpus callosum in alcohol-dependent males

Yajun Wang,Jiajia Zhu,Xiaohu Li,Cun Zhang,Yongqiang Yu,Zipeng Li,Haibao Wang

doi:10.1186/s12888-019-2079-6

Yajun Wang, Jiajia Zhu + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2079-6

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Abstract

BackgroundPrevious studies have provided evidence that alcohol-dependent patients have abnormality in corpus callosum (CC); however, it is unclear whether micro-structural integrity of the CC subregions is differentially affected in this disorder.MethodsIn this study, a total of 39 male individuals, including 19 alcohol-dependent patients and 20 age-matched healthy controls, underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). CC was reconstructed by DTI tractography and was divided into seven subregions. Multiple diffusion metrics of each subregion were compared between two groups.ResultsCompared to healthy controls, patients exhibited increased axial diffusivity (P = 0.007), radial diffusivity (P = 0.009) and mean diffusivity (P = 0.005) in the isthmus. In addition, we observed that daily alcohol intake was correlated positively with radial diffusivity and mean diffusivity and negatively with fractional anisotropy, while abstinence time of hospitalization was negatively correlated with mean diffusivity in the patients.ConclusionThese findings suggest a selective micro-structural integrity impairment of the corpus callosum subregions in alcohol dependence, characterized by axon and myelin alterations in the isthmus.

Highlights

Previous studies have provided evidence that alcohol-dependent patients have abnormality in corpus callosum (CC); it is unclear whether micro-structural integrity of the CC subregions is differentially affected in this disorder
The differences in diffusion metrics of the 8 fibers between alcohol-dependent patients and healthy controls are shown in Tables 2 and 3, Additional file 1: Table S2 and Fig. 2
We found that the whole CC and its subregions of the alcohol-dependent patients exhibited alterations mainly in axial diffusivity (AD), radial diffusivity (RD) and mean diffusivity (MD), which is consistent with previous studies showing that these three diffusion metrics are more sensitive than fractional anisotropy (FA) [36]

Summary

Introduction

Previous studies have provided evidence that alcohol-dependent patients have abnormality in corpus callosum (CC); it is unclear whether micro-structural integrity of the CC subregions is differentially affected in this disorder. With the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), previous studies have found widespread brain white matter impairments in addictive disorders [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22] including alcohol dependence [11,12,13,14,15,16, 20,21,22] and these micro-structural integrity. The combination of multiple diffusion metrics may offer important insights into the underlying pathological changes of white matter in alcohol dependence

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