Comment; Shoemaker has been referencing MRI Spectroscopy including Aspartate for years–this is not new, but perhaps it’s good to get it into broader print–shame that the author didn’t provide better citations–it would have shown that this is not news.
- Adam Garkowski
- Bożena Kubas
- Marcin Hładuński
- Joanna Zajkowska
- Olga Zajkowska
- Dorota Jurgilewicz
- Radosław Zawadzki
- Ewa Garkowska
- Sławomir Pancewicz
- Urszula Łebkowska
Abstract
Background
We hypothesized that since Borrelia burgdorferi causes systemic inflammation and infects the brain, it may lead to alterations in cerebral metabolism, as measured by 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS). The purpose of our study was to determine whether 1H-MRS could detect brain metabolite alterations in patients with early Lyme neuroborreliosis (LNB) in normal-appearing brain tissue on the conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Methods
Twenty-six patients diagnosed with early LNB and twenty-six healthy volunteers as a control group have been involved in the study. All of them underwent routine MRI protocol using 3.0-T MRI scanner. 1H-MRS examinations were performed with repetition time (TR) = 2000 ms, and echo time (TE) = 135 ms. Single voxels were positioned in the anterior and posterior parts of the right and left frontal lobes.
Results
We found a statistically significant decrease of the N-acetylaspartate/creatine ratio within the anterior part of the right and left frontal lobes (p ≤ 0.001 and p = 0.001 respectively) and in the posterior part of the right and left frontal lobes (p ≤ 0.001 and 0.031) in the patients with LNB.
Conclusion
A significant reduction in NAA/Cr ratio in comparison with the controls suggests the presence of diffuse neuronal loss in patients with early LNB.
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