Validation of glutathione quantitation from STEAM spectra against edited 1H NMR spectroscopy at 4T: application to schizophrenia

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glutathione, published as a controlled clinical trial.

Quantitation of glutathione (GSH) in the human brain in vivo using short echo time 1H NMR spectroscopy is challenging because GSH resonances are not easily resolved.

The main objective of this study was to validate such quantitation in a clinically relevant population using the resolved GSH resonances provided by edited spectroscopy.

A secondary objective was to compare several of the neurochemical concentrations quantified along with GSH using LCModel analysis of short echo time spectra in schizophrenia versus control.

Who Took Part

The study group was 13 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, both men and women.

GSH was quantified at 4T from short echo STEAM spectra and MEGA-PRESS edited spectra from identical volumes of interest (anterior cingulate) in ten volunteers.

Neurochemical profiles were quantified in nine controls and 13 medicated schizophrenic patients.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a single-blind study.

In this single-blind Glutathione study one party knew the assignments and the other did not.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Algorithms, Biomarkers, Glutathione, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Protons, Reproducibility of Results and Schizophrenia.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a single-blind study of Glutathione in 13 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2005 (Magma (New York, N.Y.)), a journal based in Germany.

More context: the Glutathione compound page, all human trials.