Abstract #2367

Estimation of in vivo γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels in the neonatal brain

Moyoko Tomiyasu^1,2, Noriko Aida³, Jun Shibasaki⁴, Katsutoshi Murata⁵, Keith Heberlein⁶, Mark A. Brown⁷, Eiji Shimizu², Hiroshi Tsuji¹, and Takayuki Obata¹

¹National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Chiba, Japan, ²Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, ³Department of Radiology, Kanagawa Children's Medical Center, Yokohama, Japan, ⁴Kanagawa Children's Medical Center, Yokohama, Japan, ⁵Siemens, Tokyo, Japan, ⁶Biomedical Imaging Technology Center, Burlington, MA, United States, ⁷University of Colorado, Cary, NC, United States

We examined in vivo brain γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels of neonates and compared them with those of children. In this study, 32 normal neonates and 12 normal children (controls) had their brain GABA levels measured using clinical 3T edited-MRS. The neonates exhibited significantly lower GABA+ levels than the children in both the basal ganglia and cerebellum, which is consistent with previous in vitro data. While significantly higher GABA+/Cr levels were detected in the neonatal cerebellum, care should be taken when comparing GABA+/Cr levels between different ages. This is the first report about the in vivo brain GABA levels of neonates.

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