Sex differences in the neuroanatomy of alcohol dependence: hippocampus and amygdala subregions in a sample of 966 people from the ENIGMA Addiction Working Group
Grace, Sally; Rossetti, Maria Gloria; Allen, Nicholas; Batalla, Albert; Bellani, Marcella; Brambilla, Paolo; Chye, Yann; Cousijn, Janna; Goudriaan, Anna E.; Hester, Robert; Hutchison, Kent; Labuschagne, Izelle; Momenan, Reza; Martin-Santos, Rocio; Rendell, Peter; Solowij, Nadia; Sinha, Rajita; Li, Chiang shan Ray; Schmaal, Lianne; Sjoerds, Zsuzsika; Suo, Chao; Terrett, Gill; van Holst, Ruth J.; Veltman, Dick J.; Yücel, Murat; Thompson, Paul; Conrod, Patricia; Mackey, Scott; Garavan, Hugh; Lorenzetti, Valentina
(2021) Translational Psychiatry, volume 11, issue 1
(Article)
Abstract
Males and females with alcohol dependence have distinct mental health and cognitive problems. Animal models of addiction postulate that the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are partially distinct, but there is little evidence of sex differences in humans with alcohol dependence as most neuroimaging studies have been conducted in males. We examined
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hippocampal and amygdala subregions in a large sample of 966 people from the ENIGMA Addiction Working Group. This comprised 643 people with alcohol dependence (225 females), and a comparison group of 323 people without alcohol dependence (98 females). Males with alcohol dependence had smaller volumes of the total amygdala and its basolateral nucleus than male controls, that exacerbated with alcohol dose. Alcohol dependence was also associated with smaller volumes of the hippocampus and its CA1 and subiculum subfield volumes in both males and females. In summary, hippocampal and amygdalar subregions may be sensitive to both shared and distinct mechanisms in alcohol-dependent males and females.
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Keywords: Alcoholism, Amygdala, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neuroanatomy, Sex Characteristics, Psychiatry and Mental health, Biological Psychiatry, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Journal Article, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
ISSN: 2158-3188
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Note: Funding Information: Paul Thomson received grant support from Biogen, Inc., for work unrelated to this manuscript. Funding Information: We thank Diny Thomson, Danielle Tichelaar, Emily Robinson, Emily Watt, Iris Starcheus, Jamie Gladwell, John Tzaferis, Kirsty Kearney, and Simone Mizzi for their significant contributions to the image quality checks. We thank Preveetha Patalay for her helpful contributions to the statistical modelling; Philip Saemann for providing comments on code to generate the images for visual inspection; and Juan Dominguez for his helpful comments on the code to perform the FreeSurfer segmentation. This work was supported by the MASSIVE HPC facility (www.massive.org.au). This work was also supported by funding from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH R01DA047119) and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIH/NIMH R01MH116147). Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s).
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