Brain hypoperfusion in adolescents dependent of multiple drugs.

UNLABELLED Brain SPECT imaging (BSI) with statistical parametric mapping (SPM) offers a clear and accurate vision of perfusion changes. OBJECTIVE To study brain perfusion abnormalities in adolescents' dependent of multiple drugs. METHOD Sixteen male patients (15.1 + or - 2.1 years) were submitted to (99m)Tc-HMPAO BSI with SPM. RESULTS Cortical hypoperfusion occurred in 7/16 patients (44%). There was a significant inverse correlation between the number of hypoperfused regions and the patient's age (p= -0.6737; p=0.004) and with the age when the drug dependence began (p= -0.5616; p=0.023). There was also a tendency towards an inverse correlation between regions of hypoperfusion and the duration of the drug dependence. CONCLUSION BSI with SPM can help detect hypoperfusion in adolescents dependent on multiple drugs. The younger the patients, the more regions of hypoperfusion are noted. Probably, the neuronal plasticity has an important role in this phenomenon because the highest neural activity occurs in childhood.