To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: PET Scans May Help Assess Presence of Brain Plaques Related to Alzheimer's Disease
URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/2280F2.htm
Doctor's Guide
August 11, 2008

CHICAGO -- August 11, 2008 -- A type of positron emission tomography (PET) scanning may be useful in a noninvasive assessment of the formation of Alzheimer's disease-related plaques in the brain, according to small study posted online today that will appear in the Archives of Neurology.

Ville Leinonen, MD, PhD, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues studied 10 patients without severe dementia who had undergone a biopsy of their frontal cortex because they were suspected of having normal-pressure hydrocephalus.

Among the participants, 6 had beta-amyloid plaques in their tissue samples, while 4 displayed no Alzheimer's disease-related brain changes. The patients were injected with a marker known as carbon 11-labelled Pittsburgh Compound B ([¹¹C]PiB) and then underwent a 90-minute PET scan.

Results of the scan indicated that patients who had beta-amyloid plaques in their brain biopsy specimen displayed a higher uptake of [¹¹C]PiB in certain brain areas as compared with those who did not have such accumulations.

"This study supports the use of [¹¹C]PiB PET in the evaluation of beta-amyloid deposition in, for example, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, or normal-pressure hydrocephalus," the authors concluded. "Large and prospective studies are required to verify whether [¹¹C]PiB PET will become a tool in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. Another potential use of [¹¹C]PiB would be the quantitative monitoring of beta-amyloid deposits in the brain in subjects under treatment in pharmaceutical trials of early Alzheimer's disease targeting amyloid accumulation."

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 1999 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of P\S\L content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of P\S\L. P\S\L shall not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this content or any other content on its sites, newsletters or other publications, nor for any decisions or actions taken in reliance on such content.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This news story was printed from *Doctor's Guide to the Internet*
located at http://www.docguide.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return to News Story Page

This site is maintained by webmaster@pslgroup.com
Please contact us with any comments, problems or bugs.
All contents Copyright (c) 1998 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc.
All rights reserved.