Toward Inclusion of Youths With Psychiatric Disorders in Brain-Body Research —Reply

In Reply In their letter, Goldstein et al bring attention to the interesting idea that the association between body mass index (BMI) and cortical thickness as reported in our study may be complicated by an interaction with psychiatric status. Adolescents with significant psychiatric conditions are more likely to be receiving medications that may influence appetite, energy level, weight gain, and potential metabolic dysregulation. Goldstein et al note preliminary empirical support for this perspective in 2 small but independent samples of bipolar patients. We attempted to replicate the referenced finding on frontal lobe thickness in the entire Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development cohort data from release 2.0.1. Among 10  111 individuals with complete data and who passed imaging quality control, 917 had either a current or prior diagnosis of bipolar disorder. We used a linear mixed-effects model, with BMI, bipolar diagnosis, age, sex, puberty status, race/ethnicity, household income, parental education, marital st atus, and intracranial volume as fixed effects and site and family structure as nested random effects, to test for a main effect of bipolar diagnosis or an interaction of BMI with diagnosis on cortical thickness or volume in the left or right rostral middle frontal, the medial orbitofrontal, and the anterior cingulate cortex. Of these multiple analyses, only the volume of the left medial orbitofrontal cortex produced a significant (P <  .05) result, namely ...
Source: JAMA Pediatrics - Category: Pediatrics Source Type: research