Microstructural white matter abnormalities in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of diffusion tensor imaging studies

Abstract

Background: There are no conclusive diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) findings on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) for now. We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of DTI studies to identify white matter (WM) microarchitecture changes in OCD, and also to compare the results differences between the two most frequently used methods (voxel-based analysis, VBA versus tract-based spatial statistics, TBSS) for DTI data.

Methods: A systematic search was performed on relevant studies that reported fractional anisotropy (FA) alterations between patients with OCD and healthy controls (HC). Seed-based d mapping (SDM) was applied to analyze microstructural WM abnormalities in OCD patients. Subgroup meta-analysis was subsequently performed to explore methodological differences between VBA and TBSS approaches.

Results: A total of 30 studies (with 31 datasets) that comprised 855 patients and 875 HC were identified. OCD patients exhibited significantly decreased FA in the right cerebellar hemispheric lobule, corpus callosum (CC), left superior frontal gyrus (orbital part), right gyrus rectus, left superior longitudinal fasciculus and right lenticular nucleus in the pooled meta-analysis. The VBA subgroup showed lower FA in several brain regions while the TBSS subgroup only exhibited significant FA reductions in the CC.

Conclusion: According to the pooled meta-analysis, OCD patients presented microstructural abnormalities in distributed WM tracts. However, heterogeneous results were found between VBA and TBSS studies.

Keywords: Corpus callosum; Diffusion tensor imaging; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Tract‐based spatial statistics; Voxel-based analysis; White matter.