Discussion

The present study used ¹H-MRS at 3 T to determine potential gender related distribution differences of myocardial triglyceride content in healthy individuals. Normal relative myocardial TG values, as well as concentration ranges were assessed for both genders.

The method itself, as well as the clinical application of ¹H-MRS has made substantial progress throughout the last decade. The benefits of respiratory navigator technique, which significantly improves the reproducibility of in vivo myocardial TG determination, were first described by Van der Meer et al. in 2007 ⁴.

However, potential gender differences of myocardial lipid content have not attracted much attention thus far. Only few studies deal with the influence of gender to myocardial triglyceride distribution in humans ⁵.

Conclusion

¹H-MRS is a reliable, non-invasive, and sensitive tool for acquisition of myocardial triglyceride metabolites, which have been established as important biomarkers of myocardial metabolism.

Myocardial triglyceride content obtained by cardiac ¹H-MRS is independent from gender. The gender-specific myocardial triglyceride levels reported in this study can be seen as normal and might be a valuable reference for evaluation of metabolic disorders in future ¹H-MRS studies at 3 Tesla, and possibly in clinical routine.