Naranamangalam Raghunathan Jagannathan1, Krithika Balasubramanian1, Uma Sharma1, Senthil S. Kumaran1
1Department of NMR & MRI Facility, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India
The objective was to characterize and quantitate metabolites in demyelinated rat brain tissues and compare it with the normal tissues of control rats by in-vitro 1H-MRS. Overall 28 metabolites were unambiguously assigned. The concentration of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) reduced while that of alanine (Ala) and taurine (Tau) increased in demyelinated tissues. Decreased NAA is attributed to breakdown of myelin and increased Tau is related to decreased signal transmission across the demyelinated neurons. Ala serves as a nitrogen carrier between glutamatergic neurons and surrounding astrocytes and its increase may be attributed to damage to these neurons leading to its accumulation.