Caudate nukleus volume on patient with panic disorder and relationship with the clinical variabilite

Panic disorder (PD) is a psychiatric disorder whose properties of diagnosis were well-determined, can be classified in anxiety disorders. Recently, in neuroimaging studies, some abnormalities that may be related to the signs and symptoms of the disease have been shown. In our study we aimed to investigate the morphometric alterations of caudate nücleus in the panic disoerder patients to understand the pathophsiology. The study comprised 20 Panic disordered patients who had applied to Firat University Hospital Department of Psychiatry as out- or in- patients and had been diagnosed with Panic disorder according to the criteria of DSM-IV and 20 healthy controls. The patients were administered the sociodemographical data form, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiete Rating Scale and SCID. The volumetric measurement of total brain, gray matter, white matter, caudate nükleus was performed on patients and control group by using MRI. For the whole brain volume, total white and gray matter volumes, there were no differences between the patients and healthy controls while the patient group had significantly smaller left and right caudate nucleus volumes compared with healthy controls. This can be considered caudate nucleus has an important relationship with both pathophysiology and clinical course of the disease. We suggest that the investigations which use together the visualisation technique that examine the functional qualifications of this area and the tests research the cognitive functions, make us to provide to reach more important and effective results