Magnetic resonance spectroscopic measurement of cerebral gamma-aminobutyric acid concentrations in patients with bipolar disorders

Abstract

Patients with bipolar disorders may have increased cerebral GABA concentrations. Although this was more evident in the occipital lobe, MPC/AC GABA disturbance may be of greater potential interest in view the more established role of MPF/AC in affective processing. Additional studies are warranted to assess changes in GABAergic neurotransmission and the influences of diagnosis, mood state, and medication status in bipolar disorder patients.

Meta-analysis of central and peripheral γ-aminobutyric acid levels in patients with unipolar and bipolar depression

“…18,[21][22][23]27,29,38,[51][52][53][54] Figure 1 depicts the study selection process, and the included plasma, CSF and MRS studies are described in Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3, respectively. We excluded 3 studies assessing plasma GABA levels 44,48,55 and 5 studies 34,45-47,52 assessing CSF GABA levels from our analyses because clinical samples included patients with unipolar and bipolar depression, and no independent analysis was reported.…”

“…Our search identified 45 studies: 26 studies for the comparison of patients with current MDE versus healthy controls, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]30,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] 12 studies for the comparison of patients with current MDE before treatment versus after treatment, 12,20,23,25,26,28,36,43,[47][48][49][50] and 11 for the comparison of euthymic patients and controls. 18,[21][22][23]27,29,38,[51][52][53][54] Figure 1 depicts the study selection proce...…”

“…For MRS studies, we calculated SMDs for the following regions of interest (ROIs) independently: the occipital cortex, [8][9][10][11][12]14,15,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), 13,15,16,18,22 the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), 29,30 the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) 29,30 and the left inferior frontal gyrus. 27 We estimated study heterogeneity using the Q statistic when SMDs were significant.…”

“…It was necessary to contact several authors to obtain missing data (see Acknowledgements); however, 1 research team explicitly refused to provide the requested data. 17,18 The GABA concentrations were measured in MRS studies in millimoles per kilogram, in millimoles per litre, in parts per million, or via the ratios GABA:creatine or GABA:w, with w being the voxel tissue water resonance.…”

Vitamin D3Supplemental Treatment for Mania in Youth with Bipolar Spectrum Disorders

“…The ACC, a critical center of the brain's self-regulatory system (Bush et al 2000) has been associated with BD (Cerullo et al 2009;Palermo et al 2014). Abnormalities within the c-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic neurotransmitter system have also been implicated in the pathophysiology of BD through GABA receptor gene polymorphisms (Benes and Berretta 2001;Massat et al 2002;Otani et al 2005), postmortem (Benes and Berretta 2001;Knable et al 2004;Torrey et al 2005;Woo et al 2007) and MRS studies (Wang et al 2006;Bhagwagar et al 2007;Brady et al 2013). Specifically, irregularities in ACC GABA have been shown in patients with BD (Bhagwagar et al 2007;Woo et al 2007;Brady et al 2013).…”