Amygdala functional connectivity in female patients with major depressive disorder with and without suicidal ideation

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a known major risk factor for suicide and is one of the most common mental disorders. Meanwhile, gender differences in suicidal behavior have long been recognized including the finding that women have higher rates of suicidal ideation and/or suicidal behavior than men. The mechanism underlying suicide ideation in female patients with MDD remains poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to examine possible suicidal behavior-related neural circuitry in female MDD.

In this study, 15 female participants with the first-episode MDD with suicidal ideation and 24 participants with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation as well as 39 female participants in a healthy control (HC) group, ranging in age from 18 to 50 years, underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The whole-brain amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) was compared among these three groups.

Compared with female participants with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation and those in the HC group, female participants with the first-episode MDD with suicidal ideation showed a significant difference in rsFC between the amygdala and precuneus/cuneus (p < 0.05, corrected). No significant difference in amygdala-precuneus/cuneus rsFC was observed between female patients with the first-episode MDD without suicidal ideation and the HC group (p < 0.05, corrected).

Our findings suggest that suicidal ideation in female patients with the first-episode MDD may be related to an abnormality in amygdala neural circuitry. The abnormality in amygdala-precuneus/cuneus functional connectivity might present the trait feature for suicide in women with the first-episode MDD. The precuneus/cuneus may be an important region related to suicide and require future study.