Dose-dependent influence of short-term intermittent ethanol intoxication on cerebral neurochemical changes in rats detected by ex vivo proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The aim of this study was to quantitatively assess the effects of short-term intermittent ethanol intoxication on cerebral metabolite changes among sham controls (CNTL), low-dose ethanol (LDE)-exposed, and high-dose ethanol (HDE)-exposed rats, which were determined with ex vivo high-resolution spectra. Eight-week-old male Wistar rats were divided into three groups. Twenty rats in the LDE (n = 10) and the HDE (n = 10) groups received ethanol doses of 1.5 and 2.5 g/kg, respectively, through oral gavage every 8 h for 4 days. At the end of the 4-day intermittent ethanol exposure, one-dimensional ex vivo 500-MHz 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectra were acquired from 30 samples of the frontal cortex region (from the three groups). Normalized total N-acetylaspartate (tNAA: NAA + NAAG [N-acetylaspartyl-glutamate]), GABA, and glutathione (GSH) levels were significantly lower in the frontal cortex of the HDE-exposed rats than that of the LDE-exposed rats. Moreover, compared to the CNTL group, the LDE rats exhibited significantly higher normalized GABA levels. The six pairs of normalized metabolite levels were positively (+) or negatively (−) correlated in the rat frontal cortex as follows: tNAA and GABA (+), tNAA and aspartate (Asp) (+), myo-Inositol (mIns) and Asp (−), mIns and alanine (+), mIns and taurine (+), and mIns and tNAA (−). Our results suggested that short-term intermittent ethanol intoxication might result in neuronal degeneration and dysfunction, changes in the rate of GABA synthesis, and oxidative stress in the rat frontal cortex. Our ex vivo 1H high-resolution magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy results suggested some novel metabolic markers for the dose-dependent influence of short-term intermittent ethanol intoxication in the frontal cortex.