A step towards diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

At the present time, diagnostic confirmation and visualization of the plaque in the brains of Alzheimer's patients can occur only after death, during postmortem autopsy.

The strategy to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves the use of drugs designed to decrease or eliminate the formation of waxy extracellular clumps, or amyloid plaques, that appear in the brains of AD patients. It is those plaques that are believed to contribute to the inevitable decline in neurological function of these patients. No method currently exists that permits physicians to visually monitor changes in the plaque formations of the brains of living patients. Such monitoring would require the development of a probe, or dye-like compound, capable of not only crossing the blood-brain barrier but subsequently binding to the plaque formations so that visualization of the amyloid clumps could occur using imaging methods.

• Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have created a stealth-like molecule, called BSB, that can effectively breach the blood-brain barrier in mouse models and bind specifically and sufficiently to the resident plaque formations so that they can be visualized by existing imaging techniques. Their work -- which represents the first time that Alzheimer's-like plaques have been visualized in vivo in living animals -- sets the stage for the refinement of this dye-like compound so it may be used to diagnose and monitor the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease. This research is an enormously important step toward developing an imaging method that could pinpoint the telltale signs of plaque development associated with Alzheimer's disease in a living brain.This tool could help clinicians peer into a person's brain and monitor amyloid levels in response to treatment.
• Dr. Mony de Leon, director of the Center for Brain Health and a professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine lead a team to researchers, the team found that reductions in glucose metabolism in a region of the brain called the entorhinal cortex, measured using positron-emission tomography (PET scans), can predict future changes in other parts of the brain that bring in development of mild cognitive impairment. This finding carries a high risk for future Alzheimer's disease.

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