Researchers uncover a connection between multiple sclerosis lesions and depression

, it's not that simple," said corresponding author Shan Siddiqi, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of psychiatric neuromodulation research at Brigham and Women's Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics."When a patient has lesions all over the brain, we used to assume they were unrelated to depression, because they seemed so disconnected.

While many clinicians have assumed that certain lesions were more likely to cause depression in MS, it had never been proven before, and neither had a specific pattern that connected those lesions. LNM is fundamental in seeing such a pattern for depression, since LNM allows researchers to envision networks of connectivity rather than just solitary sites of damage.

To conduct their study, Siddiqi, co-first author Isaiah Kletenik, MD, and co-authors relied on a database of 281 patients with MS which has been curated by Drs. Tanuja Chitnis, Bonnie Glanz, and Rohit Bakshi of the Brigham Multiple Sclerosis Center in the Department of Neurology. Dr.

"The more we know about the connectivity of lesions that cause symptoms, the better our ability to target an ideal stimulation site for those symptoms," said Siddiqi."We've already shown the success of targeting ourdepression circuit in other patients.

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