Clinical Characteristics of Female Panic Disorder Patients with Abortion History

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study is to investigate differences in clinical characteristics between female panic disorder (PD) patients with abortion history (PD+A) and without abortion history (PD−A).METHODS: We examined data from 341 female patients diagnosed with PD. We divided the patients with PD into PD+A (82 patients) and PD−A (259 patients) to compare demographic and clinical characteristics. The following instruments were applied : stress coping strategies, NEO-neuroticism, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Revised (ASI-R), the Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire (APPQ), the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Sheehan Disability Scale.RESULTS: Compared to the PD−A, the PD+A group showed no significant difference in coping strategies. However, significantly higher scores in neuroticism, the ASI-R, the APPQ and the BAI were observed. In terms of health-related disability, the PD+A group did not show significant difference.CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the PD+A group may differ from the PD−A group in trait markers such as neuroticism and anxiety sensitivity, and abortion history may be associated with panic-related symptom severity. Our study suggests that further consideration is needed on such clinical characteristics in PD patients with abortion history.

Effects of Uric Acid on the Alterations of White Matter Connectivity in Patients with Major Depression

OBJECTIVE: Uric acid is a non-enzymatic antioxidant associated with depression. Despite its known protective role in other brain disorders, little is known about its influence on the structural characteristics of brains of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). This study explored the association between uric acid and characteristics of white matter (WM) in patients with MDD. METHODS: A total of 32 patients with MDD and 23 healthy controls (HCs) were examined. All participants were scored based on the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory at baseline. All patients were also rated with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. We collected blood samples from all participants immediately after their enrollment and before the initiation of antidepressants in case of patients. Tract-based spatial statistics were used for all imaging analyses. RESULTS: Lower fractional anisotropy (FA) and higher radial diffusivity (RD) values were found in the MDD group than in the HC group. Voxelwise correlation analysis revealed that the serum uric acid levels positively correlated with the FA and negatively with the RD in WM regions that previously showed significant group differences in the MDD group. The correlated areas were located in the left anterior corona radiata, left frontal lobe WM, and left anterior cingulate cortex WM. CONCLUSION: The present study suggests a significant association between altered WM connectivity and serum uric acid levels in patients with MDD, possibly through demyelination.

Erratum: Effects of Uric Acid on the Alterations of White Matter Connectivity in Patients with Major Depression

The authors discovered that the p-value for group difference in sex (male/female) in Table 1 was incorrect. And the authors described unclearly whether the p-value for the sex distribution was obtained by chi-square test or Fisher's exact test.