Interrogating Metabolism Kinetics in the Human Brain
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Interrogating metabolism kinetics of the human brain using magnetic resonance spectroscopy
IRAS ID
221640
Contact name
Peter Hutchinson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Head injuries affect thousands of people in the UK every year. Most survivors of severe head injuries are young and are often left with neurological problems leading to life-long dependency. Much of the brain damage happens in the hours and days immediately following the injury and is potentially reversible. This secondary injury is in part due to metabolic dysfunction: cells failing to generate sufficient energy to overcome the disturbed cellular environment that occurs.
Even in health brain metabolism is complex and the different steps are incompletely understood. Following head injury it is not clear which of these steps are the most critically interrupted, and how. This study aims to study how quickly each key step of brain metabolism occurs in patients with head injury when compared to people with uninjured brains. Identifying which step is the most dysfunctional will allow us to target therapy for metabolic dysfunction.
We will use MR imaging and spectroscopy at the same time as carbon-13 labelled sugar is infused intravenously in our specialist MR unit. We will study patients with acute severe traumatic brain injury. As these patients are sedated for their treatment we will compare them to patients who are having a general anaesthetic for simple spine operations under our care, to account for the likely significant effect of the anaesthetic. We will also compare these sedated healthy volunteers to awake healthy volunteers in order to study the effect of general anaesthetic on the kinetics of human brain metabolism; an important question in itself.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EE/0075
Date of REC Opinion
16 May 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion