Russell H Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Mol Psychiatry. 2023 May;28(5):2018-2029. doi: 10.1038/s41380-023-01969-5. Epub 2023 Feb 2.
Seven Tesla magnetic resonance spectroscopy (7T MRS) offers a precise measurement of metabolic levels in the human brain via a non-invasive approach. Studying longitudinal changes in brain metabolites could help evaluate the characteristics of disease over time. This approach may also shed light on how the age of study participants and duration of illness may influence these metabolites. This study used 7T MRS to investigate longitudinal patterns of brain metabolites in young adulthood in both healthy controls and patients. A four-year longitudinal cohort with 38 patients with first episode psychosis (onset within 2 years) and 48 healthy controls was used to examine 10 brain metabolites in 5 brain regions associated with the pathophysiology of psychosis in a comprehensive manner. Both patients and controls were found to have significant longitudinal reductions in glutamate in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Only patients were found to have a significant decrease over time in γ-aminobutyric acid, N-acetyl aspartate, myo-inositol, total choline, and total creatine in the ACC. Together we highlight the ACC with dynamic changes in several metabolites in early-stage psychosis, in contrast to the other 4 brain regions that also are known to play roles in psychosis. Meanwhile, glutathione was uniquely found to have a near zero annual percentage change in both patients and controls in all 5 brain regions during a four-year follow-up in young adulthood. Given that a reduction of the glutathione in the ACC has been reported as a feature of treatment-refractory psychosis, this observation further supports the potential of glutathione as a biomarker for this subset of patients with psychosis.
7T 磁共振波谱(7T MRS)通过非侵入性方法提供了对人脑代谢水平的精确测量。研究脑代谢物的纵向变化有助于评估疾病随时间的特征。这种方法还可以揭示研究参与者的年龄和疾病持续时间如何影响这些代谢物。本研究使用 7T MRS 来研究年轻成年人中健康对照组和患者的脑代谢物的纵向变化模式。一个由 38 名首发精神病患者(发病在 2 年内)和 48 名健康对照组组成的四年纵向队列,全面检查了与精神病病理生理学相关的 5 个脑区的 10 种脑代谢物。发现患者和对照组在前扣带回皮层(ACC)中的谷氨酸均有显著的纵向减少。只有患者在 ACC 中γ-氨基丁酸、N-乙酰天冬氨酸、肌醇、总胆碱和总肌酸随时间呈显著下降。我们一起强调了 ACC 中几种代谢物的动态变化,这与其他 4 个已知在精神病中起作用的脑区形成对比。同时,在青年期的四年随访中,我们发现谷胱甘肽在所有 5 个脑区的患者和对照组中的年百分比变化都接近零。鉴于 ACC 中谷胱甘肽的减少已被报道为治疗抵抗性精神病的特征,这一观察结果进一步支持了谷胱甘肽作为这组精神病患者生物标志物的潜力。