Fig. 2 presents box plots of the regional metabolite values for each group. Group comparisons revealed that the total AUD group showed a trend toward lower NAA levels than controls (t=2.0937, p=.0441, Cohen’s d=0.834). Further analysis showed that relative to controls relapsers alone (t=2.5682, p=.0202, Cohen’s d=1.144) and the combined group of relapsers+AUD-lost to follow-up (t=2.6713, p=.013, Cohen’s d=1.177) had significant NAA deficits in the thalamus (Fig. 3). The remaining three metabolite levels did not distinguish the groups, although thalamic tCr showed a trend toward being lower in the relapser (t=2.1609, p=.0489, Cohen’s d=1.053) and relapser+lost (t=1.8064, p=.0845, Cohen’s d=0.791) groups compared with controls. None of the group comparisons based on frontal white matter metabolite levels was significant. Cohen’s d for the comparisons deemed significant with family-wise Bonferroni correction indicated large effect sizes.
