Thalamus volume on patient with borderline personality disorder and relationship with the clinical variabilite

ABSTRACT THALAMUS VOLUME ON PATIENT WITH BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER AND RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CLINICAL VARIABILITE Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disease discussed under the headin cluster B personality disorder in DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association: The manuel Psychiatric Disorders Identification and Classification, Revised Fourth Edition). In recent years, the abnormalities were detected that may be associated with determinative signs and symptoms of disease in neuro-imaging studies performed in patients with BPD. In our study, we aimed to investigate the morphometric changes in the thalamus in patients in order to better understand the ethiopathogenesis of BPD. The study comprised 20 patient of borderline personality disorder who had applied to Firat University Hospital Department of Psychiatry as out- or in- patients and had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder according to the criteria of DSM-IV and 20 healthy controls. It was administered to patient the sociodemographical data form, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiete Rating Scale, Buss-Pery aggression scale, Barrat impulsiveness scale, SCID-I and CID-II. The volumetric measurement of total brain, gray matter, white matter, thalamus was performed by using MRI on patients and control group. 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 thalamus volumes compared with healthy controls. This can be considered thalamus 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. Key words: Borderline personality disorder, volume, Thalamus, MRI