Napapon Sailasuta1, Osama Abulseoud2,
1Clinical MR Spectroscopy, Huntington
Medical Research Institutes, Pasadena, CA, United States; 2University
of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, United
States; 3Rudi Schulte Research Institute, Santa Barbara , CA,
United States
Molecular
Imaging in CNS depends upon selective probes which penetrate the blood brain
barrier and document receptors, transporters enzymes or metabolic flux rates.
1-13C enriched acetate, a normal cerebral fuel has the unique property of
cellular transport into glia and exclusion from neurons. Advances in 13C MR have brought this assay
to routine use whereby glial metabolic rate can be assayed in frontal brain
without unsafe heat deposition conventionally associated with the 13C
method. 50% reduction frontal metabolism
of glia was detected in severely methamphetamine dependent patients during
the initial phase of abstinence.