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Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by difficulties in social communication, unusually restricted, repetitive behavior and interests, and specific abnormalities in language and perception. The precise etiology of ASD is still unknown and probably...

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Autores principales: Endres, Dominique, Tebartz van Elst, Ludger, Meyer, Simon A., Feige, Bernd, Nickel, Kathrin, Bubl, Anna, Riedel, Andreas, Ebert, Dieter, Lange, Thomas, Glauche, Volkmar, Biscaldi, Monica, Philipsen, Alexandra, Maier, Simon J., Perlov, Evgeniy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5351053/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28316774
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-017-0122-3
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author Endres, Dominique
Tebartz van Elst, Ludger
Meyer, Simon A.
Feige, Bernd
Nickel, Kathrin
Bubl, Anna
Riedel, Andreas
Ebert, Dieter
Lange, Thomas
Glauche, Volkmar
Biscaldi, Monica
Philipsen, Alexandra
Maier, Simon J.
Perlov, Evgeniy
author_facet Endres, Dominique
Tebartz van Elst, Ludger
Meyer, Simon A.
Feige, Bernd
Nickel, Kathrin
Bubl, Anna
Riedel, Andreas
Ebert, Dieter
Lange, Thomas
Glauche, Volkmar
Biscaldi, Monica
Philipsen, Alexandra
Maier, Simon J.
Perlov, Evgeniy
author_sort Endres, Dominique
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by difficulties in social communication, unusually restricted, repetitive behavior and interests, and specific abnormalities in language and perception. The precise etiology of ASD is still unknown and probably heterogeneous. In a subgroup of patients, toxic environmental exposure might lead to an imbalance between oxidative stress and anti-oxidant systems. Previous serum and postmortem studies measuring levels of glutathione (GSH), the main cellular free radical scavenger in the brain, have supported the hypothesis that this compound might play a role in the pathophysiology of autism. METHODS: Using the method of single-voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), we analyzed the GSH signal in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of 24 ASD patients with normal or above average IQs and 18 matched control subjects. We hypothesized that we would find decreased GSH concentrations in both regions. RESULTS: We did not find overall group differences in neurometabolites including GSH, neither in the dorsal ACC (Wilks’ lambda test; p = 0.429) nor in the DLPFC (p = 0.288). In the dACC, we found a trend for decreased GSH signals in ASD patients (p = 0.076). CONCLUSIONS: We were unable to confirm our working hypothesis regarding decreased GSH concentrations in the ASD group. Further studies combining MRS, serum, and cerebrospinal fluid measurements of GSH metabolism including other regions of interest or even whole brain spectroscopy are needed.
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spelling pubmed-53510532017-03-17 Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study Endres, Dominique Tebartz van Elst, Ludger Meyer, Simon A. Feige, Bernd Nickel, Kathrin Bubl, Anna Riedel, Andreas Ebert, Dieter Lange, Thomas Glauche, Volkmar Biscaldi, Monica Philipsen, Alexandra Maier, Simon J. Perlov, Evgeniy Mol Autism Research BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by difficulties in social communication, unusually restricted, repetitive behavior and interests, and specific abnormalities in language and perception. The precise etiology of ASD is still unknown and probably heterogeneous. In a subgroup of patients, toxic environmental exposure might lead to an imbalance between oxidative stress and anti-oxidant systems. Previous serum and postmortem studies measuring levels of glutathione (GSH), the main cellular free radical scavenger in the brain, have supported the hypothesis that this compound might play a role in the pathophysiology of autism. METHODS: Using the method of single-voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), we analyzed the GSH signal in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of 24 ASD patients with normal or above average IQs and 18 matched control subjects. We hypothesized that we would find decreased GSH concentrations in both regions. RESULTS: We did not find overall group differences in neurometabolites including GSH, neither in the dorsal ACC (Wilks’ lambda test; p = 0.429) nor in the DLPFC (p = 0.288). In the dACC, we found a trend for decreased GSH signals in ASD patients (p = 0.076). CONCLUSIONS: We were unable to confirm our working hypothesis regarding decreased GSH concentrations in the ASD group. Further studies combining MRS, serum, and cerebrospinal fluid measurements of GSH metabolism including other regions of interest or even whole brain spectroscopy are needed. BioMed Central 2017-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5351053/ /pubmed/28316774 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-017-0122-3 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Endres, Dominique
Tebartz van Elst, Ludger
Meyer, Simon A.
Feige, Bernd
Nickel, Kathrin
Bubl, Anna
Riedel, Andreas
Ebert, Dieter
Lange, Thomas
Glauche, Volkmar
Biscaldi, Monica
Philipsen, Alexandra
Maier, Simon J.
Perlov, Evgeniy
Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title_full Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title_fullStr Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title_full_unstemmed Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title_short Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study
title_sort glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an mrs study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5351053/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28316774
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-017-0122-3
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