Abstract #1617

Quantifying Spinal Cord and Brain Metabolic Alterations in the Motor System after Spinal Cord Injury Using Metabolite-Cycling Semi-Laser ¹H-MRS

Anna Lebret¹, Simon Schading-Sassenhausen¹, Kadir Şimşek^2,3, Pauline Gut⁴, Sabrina Imhof¹, Björn Zörner^1,5, Roland Kreis^6,7,8, Patrick Freund^1,9, and Maryam Seif^1,9

¹Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland, ²Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom, ³School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom, ⁴Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland, ⁵Swiss Paraplegic Centre, Nottwil, Switzerland, ⁶Magnetic Resonance Methodology, Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, ⁷Translational Imaging Center, Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine, Bern, Switzerland, ⁸Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, ⁹Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

Synopsis

Keywords: Spinal Cord, Spinal Cord, Spinal cord injury, 1H-MR spectroscopy, motor dysfunction, lumbar cord

Motivation: The metabolic changes in the motor system caused by spinal cord injury (SCI) in the lumbar enlargement are understudied.

Goal(s): To non-invasively determine metabolic changes in chronic SCI across the motor system using a robust metabolite-cycling (MC) semi-LASER MRS sequence.

Approach: ¹H-MRS was optimized and applied in the lumbar cord enlargement and the leg area of the motor cortex in 16 SCI patients and 19 healthy controls using an optimized MC semi-LASER sequence.

Results: SCI patients showed reduced total N-acetylaspartate in the atrophied lumbar cord and the motor cortex, indicative of neuronal changes (i.e., cell atrophy and/or loss).

Impact: The feasibility of lumbar cord MRS has great potential to assess tissue integrity non-invasively and provide valuable insights into neurodegenerative processes, with the potential for developing new biomarkers to improve prognostication following SCI.

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