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From the Department of Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Christine Cloak, Department of Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine, Queen’s University Tower, 1356 Lusitana Street, Honolulu, HI 96813 cloak{at}hawaii.edu
Background: Methamphetamine use is a common problem among women of childbearing age, leading to an increasing number of children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure. Whether microstructural brain changes associated with prenatal methamphetamine exposure can be detected with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is unknown.
Method: Twelve-direction DTI was performed in 29 methamphetamine-exposed and 37 unexposed children ages 3–4 years on a 3-T MRI scanner. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) were determined in the corpus callosum (genu and splenium) and bilaterally in the frontal and parietal white matter (WM), basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, globus pallidus), and thalamus.
Results: Children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure had lower ADC in the frontal (right: –2.1%, p = 0.04; left: –2.0%, p = 0.09) and parietal WM (right: –3.9%, p = 0.002; left: –3.3%, p = 0.02) compared to unexposed children. The methamphetamine-exposed children also showed a trend for higher FA in the left frontal WM (+4.9%, p = 0.06) compared to the unexposed children.
Conclusion: Since less myelination and higher dendritic or spine density have been reported in animals exposed to methamphetamine, lower diffusion in our children may reflect more compact axons or greater dendritic or spine density associated with prenatal methamphetamine exposure. These findings suggest alterations in white matter maturation in these children exposed to methamphetamine in utero.
Abbreviations: ADC = apparent diffusion coefficient; ANOVA = analysis of variance; ASI = Addiction Severity Index; CES-D = Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression scale; DSM-IV = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition; DTI = diffusion tensor imaging; EPI = echoplanar imaging; FA = fractional anisotropy; ISP = Index of Social Position; NART-R = National Adult Reading Test; ROI = region of interest; SASSI = Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory; TE = echo time; TI = inversion time; TR = repetition time; VIQ = verbal intelligence; WM = white matter.
e-Pub ahead of print on April 15, 2009, at www.neurology.org.
Supported by funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01-DA21016-LC, K24-DA16170-LC; K02-DA16991-TE; K01-DA021203-CC) and core resources from the National Center for Research Resources (G12 RR003061-21, 1P01 RR011091-11), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U54 NS56883), and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Disclosure: The authors report no disclosures.
Medical Devices: Siemens Trio scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany).
Received July 8, 2008. Accepted in final form December 22, 2008.
Related Article
Neurology 2009 72: 2062-2063.
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