Do-Wan Lee1,
Sang-Young Kim1, Taehyeong Lee2, Anes Ju3,
Hwi-Yool Kim2, Dai-Jin Kim3, 4, Bo-Young
Choe1
1Department
of Biomedical Engineering, The Catholic University of Korea, College of
Medicine, Seoul, Korea; 2Department of Veterinary Surgery, Konkuk
University of Korea, Seoul, Korea; 3Department of Biomedical
Science, The Catholic University of Korea, College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea;
4Department of Psychiatry, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, College of
Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea
The aim of this study was to quantitatively investigate the chronic ethanol-induced cerebral metabolic changes in various regions of the rat brain, using the proton HR-MAS NMR spectroscopy technique. Our results showed that the levels of 2 to 7 metabolites were significantly altered in five brain regions of the ethanol-treated group, compared to the control group. Our key finding is that the Glu/tCr and Cho/tCr ratio levels showed the most significant differences in the thalamus of the rat brain. These increased metabolic ratio levels of the thalamus could be utilized as the key marker in the human chronic alcoholism.
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