Tenghuan is a first-year PhD student in Psychiatry at the University of Manchester. She holds a Master of Medicine in Psychiatry and Mental Health from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Clinical Medicine and Biomedical Sciences from Nanchang University and Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on the relationship between childhood trauma, inflammation, and brain imaging biomarkers, with the aim of understanding their roles in psychiatric disorders.
Individuals with a history of childhood trauma (CT) are 1.66 to 2.73 times more likely to develop depression in adulthood, with the risk of treatment-resistant depression doubling . Evidence suggests that low-grade inflammation and endothelial dysfunction contribute to depression, but the role of childhood trauma in this process remains unexplored. Individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment exhibit widespread abnormalities in white matter (WM) microstructure. However, studies examining the relationship between blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity and WM in depression, particularly in those with a history of childhood trauma, are limited. This study aims to investigate whether white matter structural changes caused by chronic inflammation in individuals with childhood trauma are associated with BBB damage.