PET Scans May Help With Alzheimer's Diagnosis
July 13th 2011 09:39
A special type of positron emission tomography (PET) scan may help detect the plaques in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease, two new studies show.
The studies are published in the Archives of Neurology.
The special PET scans use radioactive tracers to highlight amyloid protein plaques in the brain, which are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. They may allow doctors to diagnose Alzheimer's earlier -- even before any symptoms appear. But many people with amyloid plaques in their brain don't have Alzheimer's disease.
A progressive brain disease that leads to a decline in memory and other cognitive abilities,Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. According to the Alzheimer's Association, 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease in 2011, a figure that includes one in eight Americans older than 65.
One study shows that PET imaging using florbetapir F 18 as a tracer was able to distinguish between 68 people with suspected Alzheimer's disease, 60 people who showed signs of mild cognitive impairment, and 82 healthy older people with no signs of cognitive impatient.
The other study looked at PET scans using fluorine 18-labeled flutemetamol tracer among seven people with normal pressure hydrocephalus, a progressive condition that causes dementia and often mimics Alzheimer's disease. These study participants had undergone brain tissue biopsies during a procedure to treat normal pressure hydrocephalus. Biopsy results correlated with those seen via PET scans.
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