With average life span of humans showing a global upward tilt, it is common these days to encounter Alzheimer’s Disease. If diagnosis could be early couldn’t it make a difference both to the care taker and those affected?

Team@CMHF

There were significant differences in brain amyloid content exhibited on positron emission tomography of patients with normal and impaired cognition, suggesting PET might have a role in differential diagnosis of dementia, investigators in a multicenter study concluded.

The standard uptake value ratios (SUVRs) for the tracer florbetapir F 18 declined in linear fashion from patients with probable Alzheimer’s disease to those with mild cognitive impairment to a group of older normal controls.

Amyloid imaging has shown promise as a means of evaluating patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia and cognitive impairment. In particular, florbetapir has demonstrated potential for measuring cortical fibrillar beta-amyloid in preclinical and clinical studies.

The investigators considered an SUVR ≥1.17 as reflecting amyloid levels associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a threshold based on antemortem PET and postmortem neuropathologic data from 19 patients.

The second study of PET imaging of amyloid involved seven patients who had undergone previous cortical biopsy related to normal-pressure hydrocephalus.
The investigators compared brain uptake of 18F-labeled flutemetamol PET imaging with immunohistochemical estimates of amyloid levels in the biopsy specimens.
Comparison of the two measures showed 100% agreement between PET and immunohistochemical data.

“To our knowledge, these data are the first to demonstrate the concordance of 18F-flutemetamol PET imaging with histopathology, supporting its sensitivity to detect amyloid and potential use in the study and detection of Alzheimer disease,”

Ref: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Geriatrics/AlzheimersDisease/27537?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyHeadlines&utm_source=WC&userid=333280