6 trifluoromethoxy benzothiazole gabapentin zidovudine and sodium dichloroacetate this invention can also be used to monitor drug improvement produced by treatment of other eurodegenerative diseases for which naa decline has been observed such as alzheimer 39 s disease moreover spontaneous improvement with time in naa observed in certain types of cerebrovascular insults and in acute exacerbations of multiple sclerosis d l arnold et al 1992 proc soc magn reson med 1 643 n de stefano et al 1995 neurology 45 1193 1198 n de stefano et al 1995 magn reson med 34 721 727 also indicate that drug therapies for these disorders may be tested by mrs to assay for more complete or more rapid naa recovery with novel drug therapies this invention will help identify agents useful to human neurological therapeutics before the initiation of full scale clinical trials and will help identify dosing regiments that may be most effective in such clinical trials the present invention will be more readily understood by referring to the following examples which are given to illustrate the invention rather than to limit its scope mrs methods of the present invention used for the detection of increased naa in response to riluzole u2122 2 amino4 trifluoromethoxy benzothiazole treatment nineteen patients with a diagnosis of definite or probable als as.