Shaolin Yang1,
2, Olusola Ajilore1, Minjie Wu1, Rebecca A.
Charlton1, Melissa Lamar1, Anand Kumar1
1Department
of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States;
2Department of Radiology, University of Illinois at Chicago,
Chicago, IL, United States
Major depressive disorder (MDD) and normal aging both can be accompanied by various changes in the brain. In this report, we examined biophysical integrity of the brain using magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) imaging on 28 patients with MDD and 31 nondepressed controls, aged 30-88 years. While MTR declines with age in the brain regions shared by both groups, such as putamen, the MDD group has additional brain regions showing decline of MTR with age, such as the caudate nucleus. These findings suggest MDD and increasing age in combination are associated with more extensive brain biophysical changes than normal aging alone.