Haiying Liu1, Richard Z. Chen1, Andrea Frassetto1, Alise S. Reicin1, Richard J. Hargreaves2, Donald S. Williams2, Tung M. Fong1
1Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ, USA; 2Merck Research Labs, West Point, PA, USA
Hepatic lipid content was measured before and after a CB1R inverse agonist (AM251) treatment with MRS in DIO mice non-invasively. Our result shows there is a relatively wide distribution in hepatic lipid content, which limits the statistical power of a cross-sectional study to resolve a change. In a typical treatment study, using this MRS method to follow liver lipid content serially and individually we were able to improve the statistical power compared with that of the cross-sectional approach. It also showed advantages of MRS in revealing the change in hepatic lipid content in a routine in vivo study involving mice.