{"doi":"10.1101/2022.09.29.510115","title":"More than half of the variance in <i>in-vivo</i> <sup>1</sup> H-MRS metabolite estimates is common to all metabolites","abstract":"Abstract The present study characterized associations among brain metabolite levels, applying bivariate and multivariate (i.e., factor analysis) statistical methods to tCr-referenced estimates of the major PRESS 1 H-MRS metabolites (i.e., tNAA/tCr, tCho/tCr, mI/tCr, Glx/tCr), acquired from medial parietal lobe in a large ( n =299), well-characterized international cohort of healthy volunteers (Povazan et al., 2020). Results supported the hypothesis that 1 H-MRS-measured metabolite estimates are moderately intercorrelated ( M r = 0.42, SD r = 0.11, p s &lt; 0.001), with more than half (i.e., 57%) of the total variability in metabolite estimates common to (i.e., shared by) all metabolites. Older age was significantly associated with lower levels of common metabolite variance (CMV; β = -0.09, p = 0.048), despite not being associated with levels of any individual metabolite. Holding CMV levels constant, females had significantly lower levels of total choline (i.e., unique metabolite variance or UMV; β = -0.19, p &lt; 0.001), mirroring significant bivariate correlations between sex and total choline reported previously. If replicated, these results would suggest that applied 1 H-MRS researchers should shift their analytical framework from examining bivariate associations between individual metabolites and specialty-dependent (e.g., clinical, research) variables of interest (e.g., using t-tests) to examining multi-variable (i.e., covariate) associations between multiple metabolites and specialty-dependent variables of interest (e.g., using multiple regression). Without this shift, clear interpretation of associations of 1 H-MRS metabolites with specialty-dependent variables of interest may not be possible.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":311751,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.5155,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":238011,"name":"Helge J. Zöllner","orcid":"0000-0002-7148-292X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":699065,"name":"Saipavitra Murali‐Manohar","orcid":"0000-0002-4978-0736","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":238010,"name":"Georg Oeltzschner","orcid":"0000-0003-3083-9811","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":238015,"name":"Richard A.E. Edden","orcid":"0000-0002-0671-7374","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":459004,"name":"James J. Prisciandaro","orcid":"0000-0002-8877-7871","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:32.327694Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}