Predictors of nonresponse to cognitive behavioural therapy or venlafaxine using glucose metabolism in major depressive disorder.

Background: Longitudinal neuroimaging investigations of antidepressant treatment offer the opportunity to identify potential baseline biomarkers associated with poor outcome.

Methods: To explore the neural correlates of nonresponse to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or venlafaxine (VEN), we compared pretreatment (18)F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose positron emission tomography scans of participants with major depressive disorder responding to either 16 weeks of CBT (n = 7) or VEN treatment (n = 9) with treatment nonresponders (n = 8).

Results: Nonresponders to CBT or VEN, in contrast to responders, exhibited pretreatment hypermetabolism at the interface of the pregenual and subgenual cingulate cortices.

Limitations: Limitations of our study include the small sample sizes and the absence of both arterial sampling to determine absolute glucose metabolism and high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging coregistration for region-of-interest analyses.

Conclusion: Our current findings are consistent with those reported in previous studies of relative hyperactivity in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex in treatment-resistant populations.