Meeting Banner
Abstract #3285

MRS at 3 Tesla in Brain of Schizophrenic Patients: Elevated Glutamate in Hippocampus Decreases on Therapy

Florian Schubert1, Frank Seifert1, Karolina Leopold2, Michael Krebs2, Ines Haeke2, Juergen Gallinat2, Martin Schaefer2

1Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin, Germany; 2Psychiatry, Charite University Medicine


We performed proton MRS in hippocampus (HC) and cingulate of 30 controls and 30 schizophrenics (on neuroleptics), 17 diagnosed as acute and 13 as chronic. Glutamate was quantified with a dedicated method at TE=80ms to test the influence of memantine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, on cortical glutamate. After baseline examination patients received additional therapy with either memantine or placebo in a double blind study design. Follow-up MRS was performed after 6 weeks. Apart from elevated Glu in patients' HC at baseline, HC-Glu significantly dropped in the group of acute schizophrenics during combination therapy, whereas in the chronic group it remained unchanged.

Keywords