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Smaller volume of right hippocampal CA2/3 in patients with panic disorder

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Abstract

The hippocampus is thought to play an important role in conveying contextual information to the amygdala as the neural basis of panic disorder (PD). Previous studies have revealed functional abnormalities in the hippocampus in patients with PD compared with healthy control subjects (HC), but no study has reported volume abnormalities in the hippocampus or evaluated minute structural changes in the hippocampus in such patients. We thus investigated volume abnormalities in the subfields of the hippocampus to better understand the neurobiological basis of PD. The hippocampus was extracted from structural brain magnetic resonance images obtained from 38 patients with PD and 38 HC and then segmented into six subfields. The relative volume of each subfield was compared between the two groups. The severity of symptoms was assessed using the Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS) and social functioning was assessed using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. Our results revealed that patients with PD had a significantly smaller volume of the right cornu ammonis (CA) 2/3 hippocampal subfield compared with HC. No significant associations were found between the volumes of the right CA 2/3 and the PDSS or GAF scores in correlation analyses. In conclusion, CA2/3 is thought to be related to contextual memory function, and our results suggest that this particular hippocampal subfield plays a role in the development of PD symptoms.

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Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (Kokoro 200400762A, 200500806A, and 200632005A, B) (Y.H.), and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP25861023 and JP17K10313 (T.A.), and a grant from SENSHIN Medical Research Foundation (T.A.) of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Yokohama City University, 3-9 Fukuura, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

    Masao Takaishi, Takeshi Asami, Haruhisa Yoshida, Ryota Nakamura, Asuka Yoshimi & Yoshio Hirayasu

  2. Heian Hospital, Okinawa, Japan

    Yoshio Hirayasu

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  1. Masao Takaishi
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  2. Takeshi Asami
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  3. Haruhisa Yoshida
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  4. Ryota Nakamura
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  5. Asuka Yoshimi
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  6. Yoshio Hirayasu
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Correspondence to Takeshi Asami.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Medical Research Ethics Committee of Yokohama City University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed written consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, which was approved by the independent Ethics Committee of the Santa Lucia Foundation.

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Takaishi, M., Asami, T., Yoshida, H. et al. Smaller volume of right hippocampal CA2/3 in patients with panic disorder. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 320–326 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00259-w

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