Abstract #0403

de Galan B, Klomp D, Tack C, Heerschap A, van der Graaf M

13C-MRS studies on human brain metabolism are generally performed using 13C-1-glucose infusion under HYPERglycemic conditions to obtain sufficient signal-to-noise ratio of the 13C-labeled metabolite signals. However, this study shows the feasibility to obtain time curves of the 13C-MR metabolite signals under HYPOglycemic conditions by the application of an optimized hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemic clamp method, a 13C/1H volume head coil, and an ISIS-DEPT pulse sequence at 3T. This method not only allows studies on normal brain metabolism during hypoglycemia, but it also opens possibilities to study differences in hypoglycemic brain metabolism of diabetic patients with and without hypoglycemia unawareness.