Knowledge about sobriety status 3 months after MRS examination provided a critical variable to distinguish alcoholics with regional metabolites abnormalities compared with those without detectable differences from controls. Specifically, AUD subgroups that either relapsed or were lost to follow-up had significantly lower thalamic NAA not identified in AUD participants who had maintained abstinence. The current study, however, did not support our hypothesis that lower NAA levels in frontal white matter of AUD participants in general would be abnormally low per se, as previously reported (e.g., Bartsch et al., 2007; Bendszus et al., 2001; Durazzo et al., 2008; Jagannathan et al., 1996; Schweinsburg et al., 2003; Seitz et al., 1999), yet lower frontal and thalamus NAA did correlate with longer length of sobriety over the 3-month follow-up. Our findings may be more in line with others who found no effect of chronic alcoholism on metabolite levels (e.g., Behar et al., 1999; O’Neill et al., 2001) and comport with a similar study showing that cerebellar NAA levels were compromised only in AUD patients who relapsed within 3 weeks of recovery initiation (Parks
