Scan Finds Signs of Alzheimer’s Before Its Symptoms Appear
From Times staff and wire reports
PET scanning can detect brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease long before actual symptoms appear, a multicenter research team reports in the March 21 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The sophisticated imaging technology showed damage in the brains of individuals at risk of Alzheimer’s in the same sites where damage is known to occur when symptoms appear.
The patients studied were known to be at high risk of developing the disease because they carry two copies of a gene called Apo E4. Although the technique cannot yet be used clinically to determine whether an individual is developing the disease, researchers predicted that it would be very useful in monitoring the effectiveness of new Alzheimer’s drugs.
