7799 Kurtosis : A Potential Imaging Marker In Depression ?

Purpose: Although bipolar disorder (BPD) usually presents in adolescence or young adulthood, most patients with BPD follow a life-long recurrent course, with ongoing psychosocial and functional deficits and high utilization of health services that persist into later life. Currently, there is a lack of data in geriatric BPD overall and in geriatric bipolar depression in particular. Bipolar depression, both in adulthood and later life, represents the predominant and least successfully treated phase of this devastating illness and is associated with an elevated risk of suicide. The role of microstructural white matter changes impacting the clinical presentation of mood disorders in later life is increasingly recognized owing to advances in neuroimaging techniques. The newly developed diffusion MRI technique, Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI), is a clinically feasible and possibly more sensitive extension of conventional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, it has not been studied in the context of geriatric BPD. In this study, we utilized DKI to assess its sensitivity in detecting microstructural changes in the brain of older adults with BPD.