Exploring glucose metabolic impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease with DMI using 6,6′-2H2-D-glucose and 2,2’-2H2-deoxy-D-glucose at 14.1T

We performed a deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) investigation of two deuterated probes with different metabolic properties: 1) the glucose analog 2,2’-2H2-deoxy-D-glucose (2H22DG) which gets intracellularly trapped after being phosphorylated by hexokinase; and 2) 6,6′-2H2-D-glucose (2H2Glc) which undergoes full oxidative catabolism. We tested their potential to detect metabolic impairment in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Our results demonstrated that the accumulation / metabolism of these two glucose derivatives can be detected dynamically in the mouse brain, and that DMI can detect disrupted glucose metabolism in an AD model.