Quantitative analysis of cerebral MRT images in patients with depressive disorders after acute myocardial infarction

The aim of the study: improvement of neuroimaging technologies gave recently evidences for pathophysiologic connection between affective disorders and structural changes in brain regions normally responsible for the mood. Nevertheless the MRI picture of brain in patients after AMI with concomitant depressive conditions is not yet studied well enough for clinical use. Hence fore we studied the changes in brain structures in patients with AMI two to four months before who expressed postinfaction depression, as compared with postAMI patients without depressive disorders. Results of MRI of 52 male patients with recent history of myocardial infarction (aged 55,5±5,3 yers) were analyzed. On the basis of the results of psychiatric tests the patients were assigned either to the first group of 31 pts with concomitant AMI and depression or to the second group of 21 patients without depressive disorders. Both patients of depressive and control groups expressed changes in brain MRI typical for chronic discirculatory encephalopathy of atherosclerotic and hypertensive ethnology, significantly more prominent in patients with depressive disorders. There is significant correlation between severity of changes in MRI scan and degree of depression. Direct positive correlation between severity of discirculatory encephalopathy (in points) and depression level (scaled as HADS with R=0,32 and as BDI with R=0,33) (р