Published in:
01-02-2012 | Editorial
Amyloid-β imaging with PET in Alzheimer’s disease: is it feasible with current radiotracers and technologies?
Authors:
Mateen C. Moghbel, Babak Saboury, Sandip Basu, Scott D. Metzler, Drew A. Torigian, Bengt Långström, Abass Alavi
Published in:
European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
|
Issue 2/2012
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Excerpt
Although it afflicts an estimated 26.6 million people worldwide—a figure that is expected to quadruple by 2050—Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has yet to be fully understood etiologically, diagnostically, or therapeutically [
1]. For decades, the most widely accepted definite diagnosis of AD has been the histological observation of senile plaques composed of amyloid-β (Aβ) and neurofibrillary tangles comprising tau [
2‐
4]. Theories abound as to the mechanisms behind these deposits of Aβ and tau, one of the most prominent of which is the “amyloid hypothesis.” This hypothesis proposes that the cleavage of amyloid precursor protein by β-secretase and γ-secretase causes Aβ42 to accumulate as senile plaques, which results in synaptic and neuronal injury [
5]. …