A study on regional cerebral blood flow at rest and stress state in anxiety disorder patients

Objective To investigate the characteristics of rest and stress regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in naive anxiety disorder patients. Methods Twenty naive anxiety disorder patients were enrolled in the study with twenty healthy volunteers as controls. The rest and stress 99 Tc m ethylene cysteinate dimer (ECD) SPECT were performed separately at 2 consecutive days, Raven reasoning test was used as a stressor. Results ①Compared to the healthy controls, the patients' rest rCBF of the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, thalamus and basal ganglia were significantly lower ( P 0.05 and 0.01). ②The patients' stress rCBF of the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, part occipital lobe, part parietal lobe, thalamus and basal ganglia were significantly lower compared to the healthy controls' ( P 0.05 and 0.01). ③Opposite to the healthy controls, the rCBF of patients increased significantly after stressor simulating. Conclusions The hypofunction of frontal lobe, temporal lobe, thalamus and basal ganglia may exist in naive anxiety disorder patients. The abnormal rCBF of patients after simulating may be one of the characteristics of anxiety disorder.