Glucose metabolism in brown adipose tissue determined by deuterium metabolic imaging in rats

Background/Objectives Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has gained growing interest as a potential target for treatment of obesity. Currently, the most widely used technique/method for in vivo measurements of BAT activity in humans is (18)FDG PET/CT. To supplement these investigations novel radiation-free methods are warranted. Deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) is a novel modality that combines magnetic resonance spectroscopic (MRS) imaging with deuterium-labelled glucose (H-2-glucose). This allows for spatio-temporal and metabolic imaging beyond glucose uptake. We aimed to evaluate if DMI could discriminate glucose metabolism in BAT of cold-acclimatised and thermoneutral rats. Subjects/Methods Male Sprague-Dawley rats were housed in a cold environment (9 degrees C, n = 10) or at thermoneutrality (30 degrees C, n = 11) for 1 week. For imaging rats were anaesthetized, received a H-2-glucose (1 M, 1.95 g/kg) bolus and DMI was acquired at baseline followed by 20 min time intervals up to 2 h. Furthermore, Dixon MRI was performed for anatomical determination of the interscapular BAT (iBAT) depot along with dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI to evaluate perfusion. Results H-2-glucose signal was higher in cold-acclimatised rats compared with thermoneutral rats (p <= 0.001) indicating an overall increase in glucose uptake and metabolism. This was in line with a lower fat/water threshold, higher perfusion and increased UCP1 mRNA expression in iBAT (ninefold increment) of cold-acclimatised rats compared with thermoneutral rats. Conclusions We find that DMI can discriminate cold-acclimatised and thermoneutral BAT in rats. This is the first study to evaluate BAT activity by DMI, which may open up for the use of the non-radioactive DMI method for BAT measurements in humans.