Illness Progression, Recent Stress, and Morphometry of Hippocampal Subfields and Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Major Depression

摘要

BACKGROUND: Longitudinal studies of illness progression in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) indicate that the onset of subsequent depressive episodes becomes increasingly decoupled from external stressors. A possible mechanism underlying this phenomenon is that multiple episodes induce long-lasting neurobiological changes that confer increased risk for recurrence. Prior morphometric studies have frequently reported volumetric reductions in patients with MDD-especially in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus-but few studies have investigated whether these changes are exacerbated by prior episodes.