Aberrant patterns of brain cerebral blood flow in Chinese han first-episode drug-naïve depressive patients with and without a family history of depression

A positive family history plays a key role in the brain pathology of depression patients and previous research has confirmed that disturbed mood maintenance may be related to abnormal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). However, little is known about whether the rCBF is different between depression patients with and without family histories. To address this question, we examined the rCBF in drug-naïve, first-episode depression patients with and without family histories of depression using a 3D pseudo-continuous arterial spin-labelling technique. We found that decreased rCBF was predominantly observed in the patients without family histories, while decreased and increased rCBF co-existed in patients with family histories. The observed brain regions with altered rCBF were associated with affection processing, such as the prefrontal, occipital and insular areas. However the patterns of rCBF alteration observed in the present study were different from those found in previous studies where patients were compared with healthy controls. Our present findings, together with the findings from previous studies have prompted the need of a long-term follow-up study to characterize the brain features of the developmental trajectory of depression and investigate the targets for precise, personalized treatments.