Brain scan technology developed by scientists at UCLA is set to help diagnose brain aging before symptoms appear, researchers say.
Scientists say the technology, coupled with patient-specific information on Alzheimer's disease risk, makes for a more accurate method of tracking brain aging.
The research was published in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
Researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) to reveal plaque and tangles, the hallmarks of neurodegeneration. The PET scans were complemented by information on patients' age and cognitive status and a genetic profile.
"Combining key patient information with a brain scan may give us better predictive power in targeting those who may benefit from early interventions, as well as help test how well treatments are working," said study author Gary Small, who holds UCLA's Parlow-Solomon chair on Aging and is a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.
As part of the study, 76 non-demented volunteers were intravenously injected with a new chemical marker called FDDNP, which binds to plaque and tangle deposits in the brain. Scientists then took PET brain scans and were able to pinpoint where abnormal protein deposits were accumulating.
Researchers found older age correlated with higher concentrations of FDDNP in the medial and lateral temporal regions of the brain, areas involved with memory, where plaques and tangles usually collect.
"The fact that we can see tau tangles as well as amyloid plaques is critically important in early detection of brain aging, since the tangles are the first abnormal proteins that appear in the brain, long before dementia is clinically obvious to the physician," said Jorge R. Barrio, a study author and professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Thirty-four of the 76 volunteers carried the APOE-4 gene allele, which heightens the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. This group demonstrated higher FDDNP levels in the frontal region of the brain, also involved in memory, than study participants without allele.
"We found that for many volunteers, the imaging scans reflected subtle brain changes which take place before symptoms manifest," said Small.
Small said the brain will try to compensate for any problems, which is why cognitive symptoms may not become apparent until much later.
"This type of scan offers an opportunity to see what is really going on in the brain," he said.
According to Small, in the future brain aging may be controlled similar to how one controls high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Patients would receive a brain scan and perhaps a genetic test to predict their risk.
