N-acetyl aspartate levels in adolescents with bipolar and/or cannabis use disorders.
J Dual Diagn
; 10(1): 39-43, 2014.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24729763
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Bipolar and cannabis use disorders commonly co-occur during adolescence, and neurochemical studies may help clarify the pathophysiology underlying this co-occurrence. This study compared metabolite concentrations in the left ventral lateral prefrontal cortex among adolescents with bipolar disorder (bipolar group; n = 14), adolescents with a cannabis use disorder (cannabis use group; n = 13), adolescents with cannabis use and bipolar disorders (bipolar and cannabis group; n = 25), and healthy adolescents (healthy controls; n = 15). We hypothesized that adolescents with bipolar disorder (with or without cannabis use disorder) would have decreased N-acetyl aspartate levels in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex compared to the other groups and that the bipolar and cannabis group would have the lowest N-acetyl aspartate levels of all groups.METHODS:
N-acetyl aspartate concentrations in the left ventral lateral prefrontal cortex were obtained using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy.RESULTS:
Adolescents with bipolar disorder showed significantly lower left ventral lateral prefrontal cortex N-acetyl aspartate levels, but post hoc analyses indicated that this was primarily due to increased N-acetyl aspartate levels in the cannabis group. The cannabis use disorder group had significantly higher N-acetyl aspartate levels compared to the bipolar disorder and the bipolar and cannabis groups (p = .0002 and p = .0002, respectively). Pearson correlations revealed a significant positive correlation between amount of cannabis used and N-acetyl aspartate concentrations.CONCLUSIONS:
Adolescents with cannabis use disorder showed higher levels of N-acetyl aspartate concentrations that were significantly positively associated with the amount of cannabis used; however, this finding was not present in adolescents with comorbid bipolar disorder.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Bipolar Disorder
/
Marijuana Abuse
/
Prefrontal Cortex
/
Aspartic Acid
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
J Dual Diagn
Year:
2014
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States