Washington: Scientists believe use of a new drug may help doctors in detecting senile dementia earlier as it is helpful in examining beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that are hallmark signs of the disease.
Currently, the disease can only be definitively confirmed through the detection of amyloid plaques and/or tangles in the brain during autopsy after death or with a brain tissue biopsy.
The new method uses the drug florbetaben as a tracer during a PET scan of the brain to visualize amyloid plaques during life.
In order to prove that the florbetaben PET scan detects beta-amyloid in the brain, the global phase III study directly compared brain regions in the PET scan to respective brain regions after death during autopsy.
For the study, more than 200 participants nearing death (including both participants with suspected Alzheimer’s disease and those without known dementia) and who were willing to donate their brain underwent MRI and florbetaben PET scan.
Based on these 246 brain regions the study found florbetaben to detect beta-amyloid with a sensitivity of 77 percent and a specificity of 94 percent.
“These results confirm that florbetaben is able to detect beta-amyloid plaques in the brain during life with great accuracy and is a suitable biomarker,” said study author Marwan Sabbagh, MD, director of Banner Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz., and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.
“This is an easy, non-invasive way to assist an Alzheimer’s diagnosis at an early stage. Also exciting is the possibility of using florbetaben as tool in future therapeutic clinical research studies where therapy goals focus on reducing levels of beta-amyloid in the brain,” he added.
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