Brain Mapping Can Aid In Diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease

A latest study led by Dr. Ville Leinonen of the University of Kuopio in Finland has found that an imaging method known as a PETdefine scan may help doctors in detecting “plaques” in the brain. These are an important factor in detecting Alzheimer’s disease.

According to this Finnish study, the brain tissue of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease contains huge clumps of amyloid plaques. But doctors are not able to detect it until the brain is examined after death in an autopsy.

Leinonen, whose study published Monday in the American Medical Association’s journal ‘Archives of Neurology’ said in a telephonic interview, “It’s very promising.”

The study took into account ten people. All these people underwent a brain biopsy because of a suspected abnormal increase of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. When researchers examined their brain tissue, they found that six of the people had Alzheimer’s disease-related plaques in the brain while four had no such brain changes.

After this the patients underwent a PETdefine scan. The PET scans helped in accurately determining plaques in nine of the ten people. This process was aided by injecting a chemical “marker”.

The researchers said that none of the ten people in the study suffered from severe dementia at the time of the study. Leinonen said, “It’s not 100 percent, but the correlation was very good.”

As of now PET scans are used by doctors to detect cancerdefine, cardiacdefine problems such as damage following a heart attack, brain abnormalities etc.

Alzheimer’s effects around 26 million people worldwide and this number is expected to reach 106 million by 2050. Last month, Canadian researchers used magnetic resonance, imaging and MRIdefine scans to locate Alzheimer’s-like plaques in rabbits.