Plaques detected in brain scans forecast cognitive impairment

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

11-Mar-2014

Contact: Rachel Harrison rachel.harrison@duke.edu 919-419-5069 Duke University Medical Center

DURHAM, N.C. -- Brain imaging using radioactive dye can detect early evidence of Alzheimer's disease that may predict future cognitive decline among adults with mild or no cognitive impairment, according to a 36-month follow-up study led by Duke Medicine.

The national, multicenter study confirms earlier findings suggesting that identifying silent beta-amyloid plaque build-up in the brain could help guide care and treatment decisions for patients at risk for Alzheimer's. The findings appeared online March 11, 2014, in Molecular Psychiatry, a Nature Publishing Group journal.

"Our research found that healthy adults and those with mild memory loss who have a positive scan for these plaques have a much faster rate of decline on memory, language and reasoning over three years," said lead author P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the neurocognitive disorders program at Duke.

Alzheimer's disease which currently has no cure afflicts an estimated five million U.S. adults, and is the sixth-leading cause of death among adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prior studies have found that changes in the brain begin years, and possibly decades, before cognitive symptoms emerge.

A biomarker that could accurately identify those at greatest risk for cognitive decline could help clinicians better evaluate and treat patients, while also accelerating the testing of drugs to treat the disease.

The current study, which enrolled 152 adults ages 50 and older, was designed to assess whether silent pathological changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer's and detected with positron emission tomography (PET) can predict cognitive decline. Of the participants, 69 had normal cognitive function at the start of the study, 52 had been recently diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, and 31 were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Subjects completed cognitive tests and underwent PET scans of their brains. This type of imaging uses a radioactive tracer to look for chemical signs of disease in specific tissues.

See the rest here:
Plaques detected in brain scans forecast cognitive impairment