Isoflurane strongly affects the diffusion of intracellular metabolites, as shown by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the monkey brain.

Isoflurane is a volatile anesthetic commonly used for animal studies. In particular, diffusion nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is frequently performed under isoflurane anesthesia. However, isoflurane is known to affect the phase transition of lipid bilayer, possibly resulting in increased permeability to metabolites. Resulting decreased restriction may affect metabolite apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). In the present work, the effect of isoflurane dose on metabolite ADC is evaluated using diffusion tensor spectroscopy in the monkey brain. For the five detected intracellular metabolites, the ADC exhibits a significant increase when isoflurane dose varies from 1% to 2%: 13%+/-8% for myo-inositol, 14%+/-13% for total N-acetyl-aspartate, 20%+/-18% for glutamate, 27%+/-7% for total creatine and 53%+/-17% for total choline. Detailed analysis of ADC changes experienced by the five different metabolites argues in favor of facilitated metabolite exchange between subcellular structures at high isoflurane dose. This work strongly supports the idea of metabolite diffusion in vivo being significantly restricted in subcellular structures at long diffusion time, and provides new insights for interpreting ADC values as measured by diffusion NMR spectroscopy.