Abstract #3728

Upper brainstem GABA levels in Parkinson’s disease

Yulu Song¹, Tao Gong¹, Muhammad G. Saleh^2,3, Mark Mikkelsen^2,3, Guangbin Wang ¹, and Richard Edden^2,3

¹Shandong Medical Imaging Research Institute, Shandong University, jinan, China, ²Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, baltimore, MD, United States, ³FM Kirby Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, baltimore, MD, United States

The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the upper brainstem are reduced in patients with PD compared to healthy controls, using edited magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS of GABA+). GABA+-edited MRS was performed in 7.5-ml voxels in the upper brainstem in 18 PD patients and 18 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs), and the spectra were processed using the Gannet software. The lower GABA+ levels in the upper brainstem of the PD patients suggest that a GABAergic deficit in the brainstem may contribute to the dopaminergic pathology in PD.

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