Hi all, I’m an undergraduate student beginning to write an honors thesis on attempting to correct for differences in GSH between tissue types in the brain to hopefully improve reliability of measurements between scans for subjects. My lab uses a 3T prisma scanner and HERMES sequence for data collection. The current project is taking measurements from voxels in the left and right thalamus, and substantia nigra. I’m wondering if anybody has advice on previous/ongoing studies that have evaluated GSH like this before, or can point me towards literature that has feasible values of GSH in white matter/gray matter/CSF. I’ve done some extensive literature searching already, but feel like I’m running in circles with the data I find regarding cortical and subcortical GSH measurements. Let me know your thoughts, and thanks!
I’m not sure that a lot of edited GSH MRS has been done separately on the thalami or the substantia nigra. There is also a review in Antioxidants that lists a bunch of studies, but the vast majority have been done in various cortices.
Keep in mind that the relaxation times for glutathione are not very precisely known, and especially not so in the subcortical structures, so whatever concentration estimates you arrive at might be difficult to interpret in relation to other brain regions anyway.
BTW, feel free to post some screenshots of the data you’re getting - these are difficult regions to do low-concentration metabolite MRS in, especially as a novice.
Hi Dr. Oeltzschner, thanks for your response. Luckily I’m not alone on this project, I’m part of a lab under the mentorship of Dr. Ian Greenhouse, collaborating with Dr. Edden as well. I’m simply searching literature as of now, seeing what I can find about any studies that have done work like this in the past. I’ve attached a few screenshots here of what our data looks like for right thal, left thal, and substantia nigra in the order they appear. The lab uses Gannet to process data.
MRSHUB_rthal.pdf (480.6 KB)
MRSHUB_lthal.pdf (487.6 KB)
MRSHUB_sn.pdf (539.1 KB)