Depression: Correlation between cerebral blood flow and items of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression in antidepressant-naive patients.

Entrez PubMed: "The purpose of this study was to correlate the basal cerebral blood flow (CBF) in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) with the score for each of the 21 questions in the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD), in order to determine the cerebral regions associated with each item. . . Items 1, 6, 11 and 20 were positively correlated with right medial frontal gyrus; item 7 was negatively correlated with bilateral medial frontal gyrus. Items 2 and 10 were positively correlated with right anterior and medial cingulate, respectively. Item 5 was negatively correlated with the left amygdala. Item 9 was negatively correlated with bilateral insula, and item 16 with right insula. Items 12 and 14 were positively correlated with right and left precentral frontal gyrus, respectively. Limitations: The small sample size and only out-patients included in the study. CONCLUSIONS: The frontal cortex plays an important role in the expression of MDD symptoms. Not all the symptoms evaluated correlated with one single structure, which may explain the diverse results reported in the literature. These preliminary results support the necessity of further analyses by symptoms that could provide more specific information on the pathophysiology of MDD."

Correlation between cerebral blood flow and items of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression in antidepressant-naive patients.
Graff-Guerrero A, Gonzalez-Olvera J, Mendoza-Espinosa Y, Vaugier V, Garcia-Reyna JC.
J Affect Disord. 2004 May;80(1):55-63.