Magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the brain under mild hypothermia indicates changes in neuroprotection-related metabolites

Prognostic value of early, conventional proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy in cooled asphyxiated infants

Background

Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) commonly leads to neurodevelopmental impairment, raising the need for prognostic tools which may guide future therapies in time. Prognostic value of proton MR spectroscopy (H-MRS) between 1 and 46 days of age has been extensively studied; however, the reproducibility and generalizability of these methods are controversial in a general clinical setting. Therefore, we investigated the prognostic performance of conventional H-MRS during first 96 postnatal hours in hypothermia-treated asphyxiated neonates.

Methods

Fifty-one consecutive hypothermia-treated HIE neonates were examined by H-MRS at three echo-times (TE = 35, 144, 288 ms) between 6 and 96 h of age, depending on clinical stability. Patients were divided into favorable (n = 35) and unfavorable (n = 16) outcome groups based on psychomotor and mental developmental index (PDI and MDI, Bayley Scales of Infant Development II) scores (≥ 70 versus < 70 or death, respectively), assessed at 18–26 months of age. Associations between 36 routinely measured metabolite ratios and outcome were studied. Age-dependency of metabolite ratios in whole patient population was assessed. Prognostic performance of metabolite ratios was evaluated by Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis.

Results

Three metabolite ratios showed significant difference between outcome groups after correction for multiple testing (p < 0.0014): myo-inositol (mIns)/N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) height, mIns/creatine (Cr) height, both at TE = 35 ms, and NAA/Cr height at TE = 144 ms. Assessment of age-dependency showed that all 3 metabolite ratios (mIns/NAA, NAA/Cr and mIns/Cr) stayed constant during first 96 postnatal hours, rendering them optimal for prediction. ROC analysis revealed that mIns/NAA gives better prediction for outcome than NAA/Cr and mIns/Cr with cut-off values 0.6798 0.6274 and 0.7798, respectively, (AUC 0.9084, 0.8396 and 0.8462, respectively, p < 0.00001); mIns/NAA had the highest specificity (95.24%) and sensitivity (84.62%) for predicting outcome of neonates with HIE any time during the first 96 postnatal hours.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that during first 96 h of age even conventional H-MRS could be a useful prognostic tool in predicting the outcome of asphyxiated neonates; mIns/NAA was found to be the best and age-independent predictor.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12887-018-1269-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Pathophysiology and the Monitoring Methods for Cardiac Arrest Associated Brain Injury

Cardiac arrest (CA) is a well-known cause of global brain ischemia. After CA and subsequent loss of consciousness, oxygen tension starts to decline and leads to a series of cellular changes that will lead to cellular death, if not reversed immediately, with brain edema as a result. The electroencephalographic activity starts to change as well. Although increased intracranial pressure (ICP) is not a direct result of cardiac arrest, it can still occur due to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy induced changes in brain tissue, and is a measure of brain edema after CA and ischemic brain injury. In this review, we will discuss the pathophysiology of brain edema after CA, some available techniques, and methods to monitor brain oxygen, electroencephalography (EEG), ICP (intracranial pressure), and microdialysis on its measurement of cerebral metabolism and its usefulness both in clinical practice and possible basic science research in development. With this review, we hope to gain knowledge of the more personalized information about patient status and specifics of their brain injury, and thus facilitating the physicians’ decision making in terms of which treatments to pursue.

MR spectroscopy in children: protocols and pitfalls in non-tumorous brain pathology

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) delivers information about cell content and metabolism in a noninvasive manner. The diagnostic strength of MRS lies in its evaluation of pathologies in combination with conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRS in children has been most widely used to evaluate brain conditions like tumors, infections, metabolic diseases or learning disabilities and especially in neonates with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. This article reviews some basic theoretical considerations, routine procedures, protocols and pitfalls and will illustrate the range of spectrum alterations occurring in some non-tumorous pediatric brain pathologies.

The effects of therapeutic hypothermia on cerebral metabolism in neonates with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy: An in vivo 1H-MR spectroscopy study

Therapeutic hypothermia has emerged as the first empirically supported therapy for neuroprotection in neonates with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). We used magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) to characterize the effects of hypothermia on energy metabolites, neurotransmitters, and antioxidants. Thirty-one neonates with HIE were studied during hypothermia and after rewarming. Metabolite concentrations (mmol/kg) were determined from the thalamus, basal ganglia, cortical grey matter, and cerebral white matter. In the thalamus, phosphocreatine concentrations were increased by 20% during hypothermia when compared to after rewarming (3.49 ± 0.88 vs. 2.90 ± 0.65, p < 0.001) while free creatine concentrations were reduced to a similar degree (3.00 ± 0.50 vs. 3.74 ± 0.85, p < 0.001). Glutamate (5.33 ± 0.82 vs. 6.32 ± 1.12, p < 0.001), aspartate (3.39 ± 0.66 vs. 3.87 ± 1.19, p < 0.05), and GABA (0.92 ± 0.36 vs. 1.19 ± 0.41, p < 0.05) were also reduced, while taurine (1.39 ± 0.52 vs. 0.79 ± 0.61, p < 0.001) and glutathione (2.23 ± 0.41 vs. 2.09 ± 0.33, p < 0.05) were increased. Similar patterns were observed in other brain regions. These findings support that hypothermia improves energy homeostasis by decreasing the availability of excitatory neurotransmitters, and thereby, cellular energy demand.

1H NMR-metabolomics: can they be a useful tool in our understanding of cardiac arrest?

OBJECTIVE

This review focuses on the presentation of the emerging technology of metabolomics, a promising tool for the detection of identifying the unrevealed biological pathways that lead to cardiac arrest.

DATA SOURCES

The electronic bases of PubMed, Scopus, and EMBASE were searched. Research terms were identified using the MESH database and were combined thereafter. Initial search terms were "cardiac arrest", "cardiopulmonary resuscitation", "post-cardiac arrest syndrome" combined with "metabolomics".

RESULTS

Metabolomics allow the monitoring of hundreds of metabolites from tissues or body fluids and already influence research in the field of cardiac metabolism. This approach has elucidated several pathophysiological mechanisms and identified profiles of metabolic changes that can be used to follow the disease processes occurring in the peri-arrest period. This can be achieved through leveraging the strengths of unbiased metabolome-wide scans, which include thousands of final downstream products of gene transcription, enzyme activity and metabolic products of extraneously administered substances, in order to identify a metabolomic fingerprint associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrest.

CONCLUSION

Although this technology is still under development, metabolomics is a promising tool for elucidating biological pathways and discovering clinical biomarkers, strengthening the efforts for optimizing both the prevention and treatment of cardiac arrest.

Accelerating phase-encoded proton MR spectroscopic imaging by compressed sensing

PURPOSE

To develop a phase encoding reduction scheme based on compressed sensing (CS) for phase-encoded (1) H MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Phantom and in vivo rat brain MRSI experiments were performed at 7 Tesla to examine the performance of CS approach and compare it with the full k-space acquisition. The CS undersampling was performed by acquiring a pseudorandom and density-varying subset of phase encodings. Residual water resonance was first removed from the undersampled k-space dataset before CS reconstruction. The CS reconstruction was performed by a linearized Bregman iteration procedure for efficiency in computing large scale L1 minimization. The spectral and spatial fidelity was evaluated by comparing spectral linewidths and metabolite maps and voxel-wise Bland-Altman analysis.

RESULTS

CS preserved the spectral resolution and metabolite content levels. No spectral broadening was observed, and the estimation biases of the metabolite content levels were no more than 4%. CS clearly preserved the boundaries of metabolite maps but led to slight loss of details in metabolite maps.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed CS approach to accelerate phase-encoded (1) H MRSI.

Prognostic value of brain proton MR spectroscopy and diffusion tensor imaging in newborns with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy treated by brain cooling

INTRODUCTION

MRI, proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-MRS), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have been shown to be of great prognostic value in term newborns with moderate-severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Currently, no data are available on ¹H-MRS and DTI performed in the subacute phase after hypothermic treatment. The aim of the present study was to assess their prognostic value in newborns affected by moderate-severe HIE and treated with selective brain cooling (BC).

METHODS

Twenty infants treated with BC underwent conventional MRI and (1)H-MRS at a mean (SD) age of 8.3 (2.8) days; 15 also underwent DTI. Peak area ratios of metabolites and DTI variables, namely mean diffusivity (MD), axial and radial diffusivity, and fractional anisotropy (FA), were calculated. Clinical outcome was monitored until 2 years of age.

RESULTS

Adverse outcome was observed in 6/20 newborns. Both ¹H-MRS and DTI variables showed higher prognostic accuracy than conventional MRI. N-acetylaspartate/creatine at a basal ganglia localisation showed 100% PPV and 93% NPV for outcome. MD showed significantly decreased values in many regions of white and gray matter, axial diffusivity showed the best predictive value (PPV and NPV) in the genu of corpus callosum (100 and 91%, respectively), and radial diffusivity was significantly decreased in fronto white matter (FWM) and fronto parietal (FP) WM. The decrement of FA showed the best AUC (0.94) in the FPWM.

CONCLUSION

Selective BC in HIE neonates does not affect the early and accurate prognostic value of ¹H-MRS and DTI, which outperform conventional MRI.

In vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy of hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury in an experimental model

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES

Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI) occurs during certain hepatobiliary surgeries, hemorrhagic shock, and veno-occlusive disease. Biochemical changes caused by hepatic IRI lead to hepatocellular remodeling, including cellular regeneration or irreversible apoptosis. This study aims to characterize and monitor the metabolic changes in hepatic IRI using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H MRS).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 8) were scanned with ¹H MRS using 5.0 × 5.0 × 5.0 mm³ voxel over a homogeneous liver parenchyma at 7 Tesla with a respiratory-gated point-resolved spectroscopy sequence at 1 day before, 6 hours, 1 day, and 1 week after 30 minutes total hepatic IRI. Signal integral ratios of choline-containing compounds (CCC), glycogen and glucose complex (Glyu), methylene proton ((-CH₂-)(n)), and methene proton (-CH=CH-) to lipid (integral sum of methyl proton (-CH₃), (-CH₂-)(n) and -CH=CH-) were quantified by areas under peaks longitudinally.

RESULTS

The CCC-to-lipid and Glyu-to-lipid ratios at 6 hours after IRI were significantly higher than those at 1 day before, 1 day, and 1 week after injury. The (-CH₂-)(n)-to-lipid, and -CH=CH-to-lipid ratios showed no significant differences over different time points. Hepatocellular regeneration was observed at 6 hours after IRI in histology with immunohistochemical technique.

CONCLUSIONS

Changes in CCC-to-lipid and Glyu-to-lipid ratios likely reflect the hepatocellular remodeling and impaired glucose utilization upon hepatic IRI, respectively. The experimental findings in the current study demonstrated that ¹H MRS is a valuable tool for characterizing either global or regional metabolic changes in liver noninvasively and longitudinally. Such capability has the potential to lead to early diagnosis and detection of impaired liver function.