Biol Psychiatry. 2026 May 4:S0006-3223(26)01221-7. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2026.04.020. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Large-scale T1-weighted MRI studies have established grey-matter abnormalities in bipolar disorder (BD), with our group contributing to consensus findings. However, structural connectivity, particularly within emotion- and reward-related circuits, remains poorly understood. Diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) enables investigation of white-matter pathways, yet prior work is constrained by small samples, methodological heterogeneity, and unclear medication effects. We conducted the largest dMRI network analysis in BD, relating symptom burden and polypharmacy to tractography-derived connectivity and graph-theoretic metrics. METHODS: Cross-sectional structural and diffusion MRI scans from 449 individuals with BD […]
Monat: Mai 2026
Diagnosis-independent contribution of low-grade inflammation to cortical atrophy across psychiatric disorders
Brain Behav Immun. 2026 May 1:106792. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2026.106792. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Peripheral low-grade inflammation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of various psychiatric disorders and has been associated with cortical brain structural alterations. However, it remains unclear whether inflammation-related cortical atrophy is disorder-specific or reflects shared, diagnosis-independent vulnerability across psychiatric conditions. METHODS: We investigated cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between baseline high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and cortical thickness in participants from the Marburg Affective Disorders Cohort Study (MACS). The baseline sample comprised 683 patients (524 with major depressive disorder [MDD], 82 with bipolar disorder [BD], 77 […]