What the clinician can learn from MRS lactate measurements.

Lactate is of special importance in brain metabolism. In the 1980s, noninvasive methods for measurement of lactate concentration and turnover rate in living brain by 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy were implemented in both animals and humans, opening the way to innovative examination of lactate's role in normal and deranged brain function. Early data on elevation of lactate in human visual cortex by physiologic stimulation and turnover of pathologically elevated brain lactate pools in animals and humans suggest that the new methods are likely to benefit clinical practice both directly--by providing information useful in management of individual patients--and indirectly--through improved understanding of disease processes.