Cerebral glucose is detectable by localized proton NMR spectroscopy in normal rat brain in vivo

This contribution reports the first direct and noninvasive observation of cerebral glucose in normal anesthetized rats (n = 16) using short-echo-time localized proton NMR spectroscopy (2.35 T, STEAM, TR = 6000 ms, TE = 20 ms, 125 microliters). In addition to resonances from N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), glutamate, total creatine, cholines, taurine, and myoinositol, all spectra exhibit strongly coupled resonances from glucose (3.43, 3.80 ppm) that are readily identifiable using model solutions. The observed level of cerebral glucose in fasted rats covered a range of 15-40% of that of NAA giving absolute concentrations of 1.1-2.8 mM when NAA is taken to be 7 mM. The arterial blood glucose concentration was 7.7 +/- 0.8 mM in the same group of animals.