Minutes TC ENIGMA-MDD meeting September 25 2013
Chair:
Lianne Schmaal
Participating:
Amsterdam: Dick Veltman
LA: Neda Jahanshad, Theo van Erp
London: Andy Simmons
Dublin: Thomas Frodl
Oxford: Beata Godlewska
Munich: Philipp Sämann
Berlin: Henrik Walter
Goettingen: Roberto Goya
Sydney: Jim Lagopoulos
Hamilton (Canada): Geoff Hall
Minutes
1. Update progress participating sites
Currently, we have 12 participating sites with in total around 1900 MDD patients and 3500 controls, see overview in online document. Two additional sites have indicated that they want to join, but haven't provided information about their sample yet: Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands (PI Arfan Ikram) and Yale, US (PI David Glahn).
Timeline:
We agreed to have all QC output and excel files with subcortical volumes and covariates/clinical variables uploaded to the online ENIGMA-MDD Google drive folder at the end of October at the latest.
To decide which clinical variables will be included in the excel file containing clinical information, everyone has agreed to add the relevant information in the table 'Clinical information' in the online document as soon as possible:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3NmrH77qusMbTNoaDZROVlsWlk&usp=sharing
or alternatively go to gmail.com
- Login with loginname: enigmamdd password: metaanalysis
- Go to 'drive' (top row in browser, next to 'gmail')
- Go to 'shared with me' (left side of screen), where you can find the document 'ENIGMA-MDD overview data'
If you have a gmail account, you can right click on the document and share the document with your own gmail address so you can access it from your own account without having to login into the enigmamdd account.
Progress:
- Andrew McIntosh (Edinburgh): not in the call, but QC done and has uploaded QC output
- Hans Grabeh/Katharina Wittfeld (Greifswald): ? (not in the call)
- Andy Simmons (IoP): QC in progress, can upload data within a few weeks
- Oliver Gruber/Roberto Goya (Goettingen): QC in progress, can upload data within 3 weeks
- Jim Lagopoulos (Sydney): QC done, will upload QC output
- Philipp Sämann (MPIP): QC in progress, can upload data within 4 weeks
- Thomas Frodl (Dublin): QC done, has already uploaded QC output
- Beata Godlewska (Ofxord): QC and segmentation in progress, can upload data within 5 weeks
- Henrik Walter (Berlin): CBASP I study segmentation almost done, CBASP II study segmentation planned, can upload all data within 5 weeks
- Geoff Hall (Hamilton, CA): segmentation done, QC in progress, can upload data within 4-5 weeks
- Dick Veltman/Lianne Schmaal (Amsterdam): QC done and QC output has been uploaded
2. Analysis plan:
For the regression analyses per site, we decided that instead of each site running the R scripts for the regression analyses individually, it would be more efficient and probably faster if each site uploads an excel file with subj id/subcortical volumes/ICV and an excel file with subj id/covariates/clinical variables to the shared google drive folder. Lianne will run the regression analyses for the patients-controls comparison and additional analyses with respect to clinical characteristics.
- Exclusion criteria:
Age (discussed in previous call): some groups have patients <18yr; suggestion: do a first analysis across groups and see whether sites with younger participants show different effect sizes and/or do additional meta-analysis in age subgroups.
Comorbidity: it seems that there are not a lot of comorbidities present in the current samples except for anxiety disorder (in most studies an Axis-I disorder other than MDD was an exclusion criteria). Anxiety disorders are common and not an exclusion criterion, but other Axis-I disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are. All sites indicated that the presence Axis-I disorders other than anxiety were an exclusion criteria in their studies.
History of a major neurological disorder as well as medication use other than antidepressants (such as antipsychotics and mood stabilizers) was an exclusion criteria in all studies of the sites that participated in this call.
- Covariates to include
Basic covariates: age, gender, ICV and scan center as a dummy covariate if applicable. Education could also be added as a covariate if all sites have info about education (please indicate whether you have information about education in years in the online document: Table 'Demographic characteristics').
- Antidepressant use
We will do an additional analysis with antidepressant use (yes/no) as a covariate and/or an extra meta analysis including only subjects without antidepressant use to compare to the main meta analysis. If all sites have information available on duration of antidepressant use, we could also do a more sophisticated analysis with antidepressant use. Please provide info about how many of your subjects were on antidepressants at time of scanning (for example in %) and whether you have info about duration of antidepressant use (I added a separate column for the latter, scroll all the way to the right) in the Table 'Clinical information' in the online document.
- additional analyses of interest (e.g. related to severity etc)
We have defined several additional analyses of interest with respect to clinical variables (not all have to be included in the first paper, but it would enhance the impact of the initial paper if we could include one or two meta analyses on clinical measures):
1) Severity of depression: almost all sites have indicated which questionnaires they used for measuring severity. On basis of this info we will determine cut-off points for each questionnaire in order to make categories of severity (if you have not indicated which questionnaires you used, please add this info in the Clinical information table in the online document)
2) Remission status (perhaps this is already covered by current severity scores): yes/no and if feasible how long patients are in remission. Please add this info in the Clinical information table in the online document (I made a separate column where you can indicate whether you have info about the duration of remission, scroll all the way to the right).
3) Age of onset: as a continuous measure or as a categorical measure (<21 and above 21, i.e. early and late onset). Please add this info in the Clinical information table in the online document (I made separate columns for age of onset as a continuous variable and as a categorical variable).
4) Recurrence: categorical first or recurrent episode. Please add this info in the Clinical information table in the online document.
5) Family history (probably for an additional paper): categorical as none/first degree/second degree. Please add whether you have this info in the Clinical information table in the online document.
6) Childhood trauma (probably for an additional paper, perhaps in combination with family history): categorical as yes/no and/or continuous or categorical on basis of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Please add whether you have info on childhood trauma and whether your study used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in the Clinical information table in the online document.
3. Memorandum of Understanding
We discussed the option of having a MOU signed by all participating sites to guarantee some level of mutual assurance to not pre-publish results and that includes some agreements on authorships etc. All sites that participated in the call agreed that signing such a document would be good. We agreed that everyone will read the MOU of the ADHD WG that Barbara Franke provided and email questions or suggestions around to the MDD WG members so that we can adapt this version and make a MDD MOU which we can discuss further in the next conference call. You can find the ADHD MOU in the online ENIGMA-MDD folder.
4. Remaining issues
There was a question about the inclusion of cortical measures. We discussed this in the previous call. Currently, we do not have protocols to obtain reliable cortical measures using Freesurfer without individual editing. Some initial efforts have already been done on the QC of cortical measures obtained by Freesurfer segmentation by the ENIGMA support group. Comparing edited with non-edited cortical measures and assess the distribution of mean thickness/volumes from FS parcellations from healthy subjects across sites and see what the site by site and region by region variation is would be of particular interest for determining the reliability of these measures. In addition, multiple scans per subject to assess internal reliability across regions should be examined. If groups have experience in developing efficient QC methods and/or have data that could be of interest for these QCs, they are encouraged to share these with the ENIGMA support group.
For now, we will go ahead with the subcortical volumes, but a meta analysis on cortical volumes would be a nice project for the future.
8. Action points:
- Update info about education in the table Demographic characteristics of the online document
- Update all info in the table Clinical information in the online document
- Upload QC output to google drive QC folder
- Upload an excel file with subj id/subcortical volumes/ICV and an excel file with subj id/covariates/clinical variables to google drive folder (I will send around an example excel file with all the covariates and clinical variables that need to be filled in for every subject once the info in the online document is complete.