Variance of the global signal as a pretreatment predictor of antidepressant treatment response in drug-naïve major depressive disorder

Abstract

Several behavioral and neuroimaging markers could be used to predict eventual antidepressant medication (ADM) outcomes in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, these predictors are either subjective or complex, which has limited their clinical use. Thus, we aimed to identify an objective and easy-to-get marker to predict early therapeutic efficacy. Forty-seven drug-naïve patients with MDD and 47 age-, gender- and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. We calculated the variable coefficient (VC) of the global signal for each subject. Baseline Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) score and that after 2 weeks of ADM were assessed for patients. Although there was no difference in VC between patients with MDD and healthy controls, we found a significant positive correlation between the VC and the decline rate of HRSD scores in the patients. Compared with the non-responding depression (NRD) group, the treatment-responsive depression (TRD) group had a higher VC. Receiver operator characteristic curve analysis revealed that the VC exhibited a good ability to differentiate TRD from NRD. In addition, the linear and logistic regression analyses showed that the VC was a significant predictor of the decline rate of HRSD scores and the antidepressant treatment response. These findings suggest that variance of the global signal may serve as a useful marker to help clinicians find an appropriate drug for individuals with MDD at the earliest opportunity and then further to facilitate personalized therapy.

Influence and interaction of resting state functional magnetic resonance and tryptophan hydroxylase-2 methylation on short-term antidepressant drug response

“…The scan time for one measurement lasted for about 8 min. During the fMRI scans, all participants were asked to be awake, to keep their eyes closed, relax, and refrain from any specific thinking [ 45 ].…”

Global Signal Topography of the Human Brain: A Novel Framework of Functional Connectivity for Psychological and Pathological Investigations

“…On the one hand, some studies have demonstrated that GS fluctuations do have some influence on and are also influenced by local neural activities in a static or dynamic way, revealing the neural basis of GS ( Turchi et al, 2018 ; Gutierrez-Barragan et al, 2019 ). On the other hand, the amplitude of GS fluctuations/GS variation (GSV) has been revealed to be associated with mental states, such as vigilance ( Wong et al, 2013 , 2016 ), conscious states ( Orban et al, 2020 ; Tanabe et al, 2020 ), and mental disorder ( Zhu et al, 2018 ). Since once “nuisance” is now a “signal” ( Uddin, 2020 ), the prevailing view is that the GS contains both non-neural and neural information ( Murphy and Fox, 2017 ).…”

Association of serum cortisol level with severity of depression and improvement in newly diagnosed patients with major depressive disorder in Jimma medical center, Southwest Ethiopia

“…In addition, the reduction of salivary cortisol level has significant association with improvement of depressive symptoms [ 11 ]. In other way, increased serum level of cortisol is strongly associated with severity of MDD in treatment naïve individuals [ 6 , 12 ]. The serum level of cortisol before and after treatment in implies its importance to determine antidepressant treatment outcome in patients with MDD [ 13 ].…”