Louis, and colleagues measured A?42/A?40 in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples obtained from 158 mostly cognitively normal individuals within 18 months of an
amyloid PET scan.
Louis have found that the link between the two proteins may lie in the brain's immune cells that hem in clumps of
amyloid. If the immune cells falter,
amyloid clumps, or plaques, injure nearby neurons and create a toxic environment that accelerates the formation and spread of tau tangles, they report.
Amyloid leads to the formation of plaque in the brain, and plaque accumulation happens many years before the symptoms begin to appear, according to the study published in the journal 'Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association'.
He presented final results of aim one of the IDEAS (Imaging Dementia-Evidence for
Amyloid Scanning) study, which seeks to prove that
amyloid imaging changes clinical management and improves health outcomes in Medicare beneficiaries who have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia of uncertain cause.
Gil Rabinovici: A negative
amyloid scan greatly reduces the likelihood that a patient will have an Alzheimer's diagnosis.
In Alzheimer's disease, beta-amyloid clumps together to form
amyloid plaques, negatively impacting communication between neurons.
"We can reduce vascular risk factors through medical treatments and lifestyle interventions, and reducing these vascular risk factors might reduce memory loss over time--especially in people with high brain
amyloid," Dr.
- First late-stage study data successfully demonstrating potential disease-modifying effects on both clinical function and
amyloid beta accumulation in the brain
The results showed that a compound that boosts the function of the endosomal network significantly cuts the production of both
amyloid beta and a precursor of the Tau protein.
'
Amyloid imaging is excellent to detect AD pathology, but it's not the perfect way to track the progression of disease, because it changes little over 2-3 years."
A scratch and sniff test that asks subjects to identify 40 odors and ranks olfaction is almost as powerful as a predictor of Alzheimer's disease is a positive test of
amyloid. Low scores on the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) are linked to a thinning of the entorhinal cortex the brain region where
amyloid plaques are thought to first appear as Alzheimer's disease takes hold, reported at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference.
A second study found that OSA was associated with increases in
amyloid build-up in older people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and a third found such an association in both normal and MCI subjects.
