Neva M. Corrigan1, Todd L. Richards1, Helen Petropoulos1, Seth D. Friedman2, Stephen R. Dager1,3
1Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 2Division of Pediatric Neurology, Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center/University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 3Departments of Bioengineering and Psychiatry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
The aim of this study is to use proton MRS to characterize cerebral lactate levels of children with autism disorder (AD) and age-matched typically developing (TD) children at three different age points (3-4, 6-7 and 9-10 years of age) to determine whether there is any evidence of mitochondrial disorder in autism during these periods of childhood development. The results show that autism children at 3 years old did not have elevated lactate compare with typically developing children. TD lactate levels were found to be higher than in the AD group in both gray and white matter.