Abstract #1044

Whole-Brain N-Acetylaspartate Concentration Comparison of Young and Elderly Healthy: Evidence for Brain Durability

William E. Wu¹, Oded Gonen¹, Juchen Hirsch², Lutz Achtnichts², Katherine Weir², Andreas U. Monsch², Achim Gass²

¹Radiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; ²Neurology, University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, Basel, Switzerland

The burden to healthcare delivery from the most common neurological disorders in the elderly is expected to become staggering. It is necessary, therefore to develop and validate non-invasive tools that can identify and quantify these disorders at their earliest treatable stage. Since they affect primarily neurons, their MR-spectroscopic marker - N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is a probe and whole-brain NAA (WBNAA) can be the sought methodology, given that most neurological diseases are global. This study compares the WBNAA in a cohort of cognitively intact elderly versus young controls to quantify the effects of 30 years of aging on the brains NAA concentration.