| Objective In order to observe the clinical efficacy of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation(taVNS)therapy on depressive disorders,Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging(fMRI)were used to investigate the regulation of spontaneous brain activity by taVNS in mild to moderate depressive disorders" patients.Methods 1.According to the diagnosis criteria of mild and moderate depressive disorder in "The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision"(ICD-10),this study recruited 20 mild to moderate depressive patients from psychiatric department of Beijing Huguosi Hospital between October 2018 and June 2019.2.Patients were assessed by using Hamilton Depression Scale(HAMD-1 7)analysis and BOLD-fMRI scan prior and after the treatment in order to evaluate the efficacy of auricular electroacupuncture therapy as an antidepressant.In this study,HAMD-17 score was used as the main curative effect index,whereas BOLD-fMRI results was the secondary efficacy index.3.Statistical analyses were conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences(SPSS)Version 20.0 to investigate and analyse the changes of HAMD-17 score over the 8-weeks treatment period.Meanwhile,amplitude of low frequency-fluctuation(ALFF)analysis were conducted to explore and evaluate the regulation of spontaneous brain activity as well as the efficacy of auricular electroacupuncture therapy on depressive patients.Results All 20 mild to moderate depressive patients,3 were male while 17 were female,with the ratio of 1:5.67.In the total sample,the oldest was 65 years old,the youngest was 18 years old,mean age was(41.95± 15.26)years old,while 6 were between 18-30 and 51-65 years old,8 were between 31-50 years old,showing that enrolled depressive patients mostly distributed among middle-aged population.In this study,eight patients were mild depressive disorder,12 were moderate depressive disorder.Overall,the lowest score of HAMD-17 scale was 10 while the highest was 24,in which the mean score of mild depressive patients was 13.25±2.68 prior treatment,while 5.38±2.78 after treatment,whereas the mean score of moderate depressive patients was 20.25± 1.83 prior treatment,while 5.58±3.20 after treatment.Furthermore,this study had used "paired sample t-test" to analyse the difference of the score between prior and after treatment.As a result,the t value of the difference score was 9.98,P<0.01,proving statistically significant.Moreover,each of the score of the 5 major factors of HAMD-17 was reduced after 8 weeks therapy.According to the analysis of "paired sample t-test",the blocked factor,cognition impairment factor,sleep disturbance factor,anxiety and somatic factor were significantly different prior and after the treatment(P<0.01).Meanwhile,the weight factor had shown no difference(P>0.05)after the analysis of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test.In addition,the ALFF values of left cerebellum,bilateral anterior central gyrus,left middle temporal gyrus,bilateral posterior central gyrus,left paracentral lobule,right superior temporal gyrus and left supplementary motor areas were significantly higher after therapy while the ALFF values of bilateral superior frontal gyrus,right inferior parietal gyrus,bilateral precuneus,right superior marginal gyrus and bilateral cingulate gyrus were significantly lower after transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation(taVNS)therapy.The result had shown that the malfunction brain network of the mild to moderate depressive disorder patients might be the frontoparietal network,default mode network,somatosensory network,temporal lobe and cerebellar network.Conclusion 1.The efficacy of taVNS therapy in remission of depressive disorder had been proven.2.The regulation of taVNS on the spontaneous neural activity of the brain networks such as frontoparietal network,default mode network,somatosensory network,temporal lobe and cerebellar network might be the effect mechanism of taVNS therapy. |
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