Article
作者: Sawyers, Chelsea ; Bearden, Carrie E ; Woods, Scott W ; Xu, Ying ; Cadenhead, Kristin S ; Goldsmith, David R ; Mathalon, Daniel H ; Cannon, Tyrone D ; Keshavan, Matcheri S ; Carrion, Ricardo E ; Perkins, Diana O ; Addington, Jean ; Ku, Benson S ; Bozack, Anne K ; Stone, William S ; Walker, Elaine F
AIMS:Inflammation and structural brain alterations are implicated in psychosis risk, yet it remains unknown whether epigenetic C-reactive protein (CRP), a DNA methylation-based estimator of cumulative inflammatory burden, is associated with brain structure in youth at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P).
METHODS:We examined associations between epigenetic and plasma CRP, regional gray matter volume (GMV), and positive symptom severity in 165 participants (108 CHR-P, 57 healthy comparison [HC] participants) from the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study Phase 2. Epigenetic CRP was derived from the Illumina 450K array; plasma CRP was quantified in a subset of 81 participants via multiplex immunoassay. GMVs of the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and hippocampus were extracted from 3-Tesla MRI scans; positive symptoms were assessed with the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms.
RESULTS:Epigenetic and plasma CRP were weakly correlated (r = 0.19). Higher epigenetic CRP was associated with lower GMV in several corticolimbic regions, including the left caudal ACC (cACC; β = - 0.08, p = 0.011), and lower cACC volume was associated with greater positive symptom severity (β = - 0.26, p = 0.001). Plasma CRP showed no significant associations in the primary combined-sample model.
CONCLUSIONS:To our knowledge, this study is the first to show that epigenetic CRP is associated with corticolimbic structural differences in CHR-P and HC youth. Epigenetic CRP may capture inflammation-related neurostructural variation relevant to psychosis risk.