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General Clinical Specialties: EndocrinologyEndocrinology Posters |
1 Department of Nuclear Medicine; 2 Department of Medicine I, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
1025
Objectives: Animal studies could show that cerebral T3-receptors are mainly expressed in limbic brain areas. Despite the well known mind and mood changes during hyper- and hypothyroidism the correlation between the thyroid hormonal state and regional brain activity is still unclear.
Methods: 10 patients with overt hypothyroidism were examined by means of 18-FDG PET and psychopathological testing, which was performed twice: under hypothyroidism and also 7 patients after complete remission. PET images were spatially normalized to the MNI space using the FDG template and correlation analyses with the thyroid hormones were calculated on voxelwise basis using SPM2.
Results: Comparison analysis showed the cerebral metabolic activity significantly reduced in the bilateral thalamus and the bilateral superior temporal gyrus including Brodmann Area 41 (p<0.001). The correlation analysis revealed the fT3 negatively correlated to the activity of the left posterior insula and the mesial temporal lobes, whereas TSH was positively correlated to the mesial temporal lobes (p<.001). Psychopathological testing showed the hypothyroid patients significantly depressed. Remarkably, even after getting euthyroid the patients showed persisting depressive symptoms (p<.001).
Conclusions: The current in vivo data on hypothyroid patients support the results of animal in vitro studies on a functional relationship between thyroid hormones and limbic brain areas. This might explain the frequently observed hypothyroidism induced depressive symptoms, which seemed to be delayed remitted compared to the hormonal normalisation.
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