Interictal Single-Voxel Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy of the Temporal Lobe in Cats with Idiopathic Epilepsy: A Prospective Case–Control Study
TL;DR
It is indicated that 1H-MRS can reveal seizure-related metabolic disturbances that are invisible on routine MRI and may ultimately assist clinicians in diagnosing, lateralising, and monitoring epilepsy in cats.
Abstract
Simple Summary Epileptic seizures are among the most common neurological problems in cats, yet in many affected animals, the brain appears entirely normal on conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and no underlying cause can be identified; these cats are diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) is a non-invasive technique that measures the biochemical composition of brain tissue rather than its anatomy, enabling microscopic metabolic changes to be detected even when standard images look normal. In this study, we performed 1H-MRS of both temporal lobes in 20 cats with idiopathic epilepsy during a seizure-free (interictal) interval and compared them with 20 healthy cats. Although most metabolite values overlapped between the groups, epileptic cats showed a significant reduction in a neuronal or metabolic dysfunction marker in the right temporal lobe, and several metabolite ratios varied according to how recently the cat had seized. These findings indicate that 1H-MRS can reveal seizure-related metabolic disturbances that are invisible on routine MRI and may ultimately assist clinicians in diagnosing, lateralising, and monitoring epilepsy in cats.