Association of inflammatory cytokines with magnetic resonance imaging features of the brain in patients with depression

There is growing evidence that the imbalance of inflammatory cytokines plays an important role in the pathophysiological mechanism of depression. However, the effects of inflammatory cytokines on the whole brain in patients with depression are still not fully elucidated. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between inflammatory cytokines and cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features using voxel-based whole-brain analysis in patients with depression. A total of 60 patients with depression and 60 healthy controls (HCs) were included. Interleukin-1 was positively correlated with gray matter volume (GMV) in the left putamen and negatively correlated with regional homogeneity (ReHo) and degree centrality (DC) in the left anterior cingulate cortex. Interleukin-6 was positively correlated with GMV in the right superior parietal lobule and ReHo in the left pallidum and putamen. Interferon-α was negatively correlated with DC in the left postcentral gyrus. The ReHo in the left pallidum in depressed patients was lower than that in HCs. The FCs based on the left pallidum as the seed in depressed patients were significantly reduced. The imaging features of the left pallidum had good performance (area under the curve: 0.891) for identifying depressed patients. Inflammatory cytokines are associated with cerebral imaging features in patients with depression and in particular, the abnormal imaging features of the left pallidum may be a potential neuroimaging biomarker of depression.