Brain Matter corrected Quantification of Phosphomono- and Phosphodiesters in the Brain of Patients with Schizophrenia

Introduction Since the finding of an altered phosophomono and -diester metabolism in cell membranes of postmortem brains of schizophrenic patients [1] several studies have used P-MRS for in vivo investigation of schizophrenic groups [2-4] in different brain regions, partly with contradictory results. Because of the scalar coupling between H and P in the molecules the resonances of phospho-monoand/or phosphodiester (Phosphorylethanolamine PE, Phosphocholine PC and Gylcero-phosphorylethanolamine GPE, Glycerophosphocholine GPC) show a multiplet structure overlying the broad phospholipid-component, their concentrations are difficult to quantify reliably. We used a 3D-whole head RINEPT sequence together with point-spread function (PSF) corrected tissue segmentation for robust absolute quantification.