Ulrike Dydak1,2, Liling Long3, Henry Zhu4, Wenmei Li3, Yueming Jiang5, Jian Chen6, X. Fu1, Shuguang Hu7, Richard A.E. Edden8, Dieter Meier9, Michael Aschner10, James Murdoch11, Wei Zheng1
1School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; 2Dep. of Radiology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA; 3Dep. of Radiology, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China; 4Dep. of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; 5Dep. of Occup. Health and Toxicology, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China; 6Guizhou Inst. of Occup. Safety and Health, Zunyi, China; 7Philips Healthcare, China; 8Schools of Biosciences and Chemistry, Cardiff University, UK; 9Inst. for Biomed. Engineering, ETH and University Zuerich, Switzerland; 10Dep. of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; 11Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, OH, USA
GABA-edited magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in the basal ganglia was combined with single voxel MRS of five different brain areas and high-resolution 3D T1-weighted imaging at 3T to assess changes in neurotransmitters and other brain metabolites, as well as the spatial distribution of T1 hyperintensities due to occupational manganese exposure in a cohort of smelters. Extensive signal hyperintensities in globus pallidus, striatal and midbrain regions were found in 8 out of 10 exposed subjects. Findings on changes in metabolism include significantly increased GABA/Cr in the thalamic area of the exposed subjects, as well as decreased NAA/Cr in frontal cortex (p<0.05).