In this work, we investigated the aging
effect on the enzyme activity of creatine kinase (CK) in healthy human visual
cortex at resting state using a newly developed in vivo 31P magnetization transfer (31P-MT)
method at 7T. Our results show that there was a strong aging dependence of the CK
enzyme activity in the resting brain, implying a significant decline of brain
energy metabolism in elderly people. In vivo 31P-MT technique should provide a valuable tool
for clinical research aiming to study aging-related neurodegenerative diseases
such as Alzheimer’s disease, and potentially for other metabolic disorders/diseases.
