Affiliations: Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General
Hospital, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA,
USA | Department of Nuclear Medicine, Klinikum rechts der
Isar, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Priv. Doz. Dr. Alexander Drzezga,
MD, Nuklearmedizinische Klinik, Klinikum rechts der Isar der Technischen
Universität München, Ismaninger Str. 22, 81675 München, Germany.
Tel.: +49 89 4140 2971; Fax: +49 89 4140 4841; E-mail:
a.drzezga@lrz.tu-muenchen.de
Abstract: With longer life expectancy, dementia based on the age-related
Alzheimers' disease (AD) has turned into one of the most prevalent disorders of
older age, representing a serious medical and socio-economic issue. There has
been growing interest in early diagnosis of this disease, particularly
regarding the initiation of new treatment strategies ahead of the onset of
irreversible neuronal damage. It is accepted that the pathologic changes
underlying AD appear in the brain years to decades before the symptomatic
stages. Consequently, clinical measures of cognitive impairment, as used for
definition of dementia, will not allow early diagnosis of AD-pathology in the
mild or asymptomatic stages. Thus, a need for complementary sensitive
biomarkers is apparent. Brain imaging markers are among the most promising
candidates for this diagnostic challenge. Particularly, [18F]FDG PET as a
marker of regional neuronal function has been demonstrated to represent a most
sensitive and specific method for early identification of AD-pathology and thus
for prediction of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), even in the mild and
asymptomatic stages. Currently, systematic data of comparable quality are
hardly available for any other imaging procedure. The purpose of this article
is to describe the typical findings of [18F]FDG PET in different stages of AD
and to demonstrate its value for early and reliable diagnosis of Alzheimer's
disease, particularly ahead of the stage of dementia of the Alzheimer's type.
