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. 2018 Feb 27;11:56. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2018.00056

Table 1.

Astrocytic abnormalities.

Type of disorder In vivo imaging data Postmortem molecular data Postmortem cellular data
Major depressive disorder

  1. PET studies document reduced glucose metabolism in the PFC (Baxter et al., 1989), amygdala (Abercrombie et al., 1998; Drevets et al., 2002b), thalamus (Su et al., 2014), and lateral temporal and parietal cortex (Drevets et al., 1992)

  2. Reduced Glx level detected by 1H-MRS (Yüksel and Öngür, 2010; Arnone et al., 2015)

  3. Increased lactate in the pregenual ACC (Ernst et al., 2017)

  4. Reduced metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) binding in the PFC, cingulate cortex, insula, thalamus and hippocampus (Deschwanden et al., 2011)

  1. Reduced GFAP protein expression in the PFC (Miguel-Hidalgo et al., 2000; Si et al., 2004), locus coeruleus (Chandley et al., 2013) and cerebellum (Fatemi et al., 2004)

  2. Reduced GFAP mRNA and protein expression in the thalamus and caudate nucleus (Torres-Platas et al., 2016)

  3. Reduced expression of astrocyte specific glutamate transporter genes (EAAT1, EAAT2) in the orbitofrontal cortex (Miguel-Hidalgo et al., 2010), dorsolateral PFC (Choudary et al., 2005; Zhao et al., 2016), hippocampus (Medina et al., 2013, 2016) and locus coeruleus (Bernard et al., 2011; Chandley et al., 2013)

  4. Downregulation of connexin 30 and 43 expressing genes in several brain areas (Nagy et al., 2017)

  5. Reduced gene expression of a gap junction protein (GJA1) in the hippocampus (Medina et al., 2016)

  6. Reduced gene expression of potassium (KCNJ10) and water channels (AQP4) in the hippocampus (Medina et al., 2016)

  1. Larger cell bodies of astrocytes and longer, more ramified processes in the ACC (Torres-Platas et al., 2011)

  2. Reduced areal fraction and packing density of astrocytes in the DLPFC of young subjects (Miguel-Hidalgo et al., 2000)

  3. Increased areal fraction and packing density of astrocytes in the DLPFC of old subjects (Miguel-Hidalgo et al., 2000)

  4. Reduced coverage of blood vessels by AQ4-positive astrocytes in the orbitofrontal cortex (Rajkowska et al., 2013)

  5. Reduced GFAP-IR in the ACC white matter (Gittins and Harrison, 2011)

  6. Reduced density in the dentate hilus of non-medicated patients (Cobb et al., 2016)

  7. Reduced density of S100B-positive astrocytes in the hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cell layer (Gos et al., 2013)

  8. Reduced density in the amygdala (Altshuler et al., 2010)

  9. Reduced density of glutamine synthetase expressing astrocytes in specific cortical gray matter areas (Bernstein et al., 2015)
Bipolar disorder

  1. Increased Glx and glutamate levels detected by 1H-MRS (Frye et al., 2007; Yüksel and Öngür, 2010; Gigante et al., 2012; Soeiro-de-Souza et al., 2015)

  2. Increased lactate in the cingulate gyrus (Dager et al., 2004)

  1. Reduced expression of GFAP mRNA levels in the white matter of the ACC (Webster et al., 2005)

  1. Increased clustering of astrocytes in the white matter adjacent to the DLPFC (Hercher et al., 2014)

  2. Reduced density of S100B-positive astrocytes in the hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cell layer (Gos et al., 2013)

Abbreviations: ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; AQ, aquaporin; DLPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; EAAT, excitatory amino acid transporter; GFAP, glial fibrillary acidic protein; Glx, a composite measure of glutamate and glutamine in 1H-MRS studies; 1H-MRS, proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy; IR, immunoreactivity; PET, Positron-Emission Tomography; PFC, prefrontal cortex.