7 T 1H Detects Human Brain Gutamate Concentration Changes in Response to Hypoglycemia: A Study of Diabetic Patients with and Without Hypoglycemia Unawareness

Melissa Terpstra¹, Amir Moheet¹, Anjali Kumar¹, Lynn E. Eberly¹, Elizabeth Seaquist¹, Gulin Oz¹

Hypoglycemia unawareness (HU) is a condition under which patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are unable to sense dangerously low blood glucose levels. Glutamate is thought to be involved in the mechanism of aberrant glucose sensing in HU. The goal of this project was to determine whether human brain glutamate concentrations respond differently to experimentally induced hypoglycemia in patients with T1D and HU than in patients with T1D without HU and healthy controls (n = 5 per group). Human brain glutamate concentration decreased (p ≤ 0.02) after initiation of hypoglycemia in all three study groups.