A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study In Acute PTSD

Objective This study used magnetic resonance imaging to detect structural abnormalities in acute severe PTSD patients who have experienced a single, extreme and long-lasting trauma. Method A voxel-based morphometry (VBM) method was used to detect the gray matter and white matter volume changes in 10 acute PTSD patients and 10 control survivors without PTSD from a coal mine flood disaster. The correlation between the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and regional gray matter density in the region of interest was also studied. Result Compared with the coal mine disaster survivors without PTSD, acute PTSD patients had significantly decreased gray matter volume in the following regions: the left anterior hippocampus, the left parahippocampal gyrus and the bilateral calcarine cortex. There was no significant white matter volume change in PTSD patients. The gray matter density in the left and right calcarine and the left hippocampus negatively correlated with the CAPS score of all subjects. Conclusion This study suggests that the reduction in limbic structure gray matter volume observed in early stage acute PTSD occurred in subjects who were exposed to extreme and severe trauma. PTSD symptom severity was associated with calcarine cortex and hippocampal gray matter density.Objective Many brain functional imaging research in posttraumatic stress disorder has been largely performed on patients with chronic disease, but there are few studies about brain cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes in severe acute PTSD patients who have experienced a single, extreme and long-lasting trauma. Method In this study, we use a quantitative and non-invasive neuroimaging technique, pulsed arterial spin-labeling (PASL) perfusion MRI, to measure regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes in 15 acute PTSD patients ,10 survivors without PTSD from a coal mine flood disaster and 25 healthy controls. Result Compared with the healthy controls(n=25) , survivors with PTSD and without PTSD(n=25) had increased rCBF in the bilateral temporal, occipital, lingual, the left paracentral lobule, precuneus and the right calcarine cortex; survivors with PTSD (n=15) had increased rCBF in the bilateral temporal, the left occipital, calcarine cortexl and the right cuneus . Conclusion Our results demonstrate that recent posttraumatic stress disorder causes a small cerebral blood flow (CBF) increase. This study also suggest that pulsed arterial spin-labeling (PASL), as a non-invasive MR imaging technique, could detect the perfusion abnormalities in acute severe PTSD patients.