Increased grey matter densities in schizophrenia patients with negative symptoms after treatment with quetiapine: A voxel-based morphometry study
International Clinical Psychopharmacology. 2009-01-01; 24(1): 34-41
DOI: 10.1097/YIC.0b013e32831daf6c
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1. Int Clin Psychopharmacol. 2009 Jan;24(1):34-41. doi:
10.1097/YIC.0b013e32831daf6c.
Increased grey matter densities in schizophrenia patients with negative symptoms
after treatment with quetiapine: a voxel-based morphometry study.
Stip E(1), Mancini-Marïe A, Letourneau G, Fahim C, Mensour B, Crivello F, Dollfus
S.
Author information:
(1)Department of Psychiatry, Fernand-Seguin Research Center, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada.
Among new-generation antipsychotics, quetiapine was found to be associated with a
partial ‘normalization’ of reduced functional activation in prefrontal and
temporal areas and studies conducted by our group found a clinical improvement in
negative symptoms in addition to restoration of frontal activation in
schizophrenia patients with blunted affect after treatment with quetiapine. Here
we investigated the parallelism between improved clinical symptoms and grey mater
density (GMD) changes in the frontal region after quetiapine treatment in 15
schizophrenia patients. We hypothesize that improvement in clinical symptoms will
be associated with change in GMD in prefrontal regions of interest. By using
voxel-based morphometry, paired t-test random-effect analysis showed a
significant increase in GMD bilaterally in the inferior frontal
cortex/orbitofrontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex after 5.5 months of
treatment with quetiapine. This GMD increase was associated with a significant
improvement in negative symptoms. When GMD was correlated with psychiatric
assessment scores, there was a negative correlation between GMD in the anterior
cingulate cortex and the Rating Scale for Emotional Blunting score (r=-665,
P=0.008) and between the orbitofrontal gyrus and the total Positive and Negative
Syndrome Scale negative score (r=-764, P=0.001). Results suggest that increased
GMD in some frontal regions are associated with an improvement of negative
symptoms. Although not unique to quetiapine, it would be reasonable to attribute
the GMD changes in the study to treatment.
DOI: 10.1097/YIC.0b013e32831daf6c
PMID: 19077676 [Indexed for MEDLINE]