Abstract #4700

The Neurobiology of Placebo Response in Adolescents with Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Lu Lu^1,2, Hailong Li¹, Jeffrey Mills³, Heidi Schroeder², Sarah Mossman², Sara Varney², Kim Cecil⁴, Melissa DelBello², Amir Levine⁵, Xiaoqi Huang¹, Qiyong Gong¹, John Sweeny^1,2, and Jeffrey Strawn²

¹Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Functional and molecular imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province,Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, ²Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Neuroscience, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ³Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ⁴Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ⁵Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States

Increasing placebo response rates represent a significant barrier to detecting treatment effects in pediatric psychiatry clinical trials. To identify biomarkers for it in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder prior to their entering a clinical trial, whole brain dynamic and static functional connectivity (FC) were used. Dynamic and static FC between the amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and regions that subserve emotion control and inhibition were significantly associated with degree of placebo response and differed between placebo responders and non-responders. These findings may be used to decrease placebo response in clinical trials to more effectively evaluate novel treatments.

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