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Alzheimer's Disease: Part 1

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Dr. Laser,

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this is a patient who's currently going to be 91.

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It's a relative of mine,

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and so I know the case well.

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On the far right is a study from five years ago,

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and the patient at that time

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had Mild Cognitive Impairment Syndrome.

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You could hardly tell,

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but on careful questioning, you could tell.

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But on general activities of everyday living,

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totally fine.

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And now, full-blown Alzheimer's disease.

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And you can compare the two,

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especially,

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you know,

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we didn't have coronal imaging on follow-up.

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The original study had a coronal,

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which you should always get in any dementia,

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but they didn't get it.

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And here's the new study that

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shows the temporal horns.

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Compare the old temporal horns from five

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years ago with the temporal horns now,

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especially on the left.

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Look at the difference.

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Oh, markedly widened.

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Substantially different.

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And look at the volume of the parahippocampal tissue.

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Much thicker before, much thinner now.

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There's no question that this patient has

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a primary neurodegenerative disease.

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Look at the horizontal fissure right here.

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Severely atrophic.

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And that atrophy has progressed.

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Little hard to tell on the axial projection.

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She's got just a little bit of atrophy in the

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olfactory region, but for the most part,

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the frontal region less involved than the parietal

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region in the back.

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Also goes along with ALZ.

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Her clinical history of difficulty with word finding,

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her short-term memory loss,

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her lack of disinhibition,

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the fact that she doesn't have tremors

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or any movement disorder,

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all completely supportive of the diagnosis

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of a Tauopathy, namely ALZ,

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progressed from MCI,

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Mild Cognitive Impairment Syndrome to ALZ.

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So you can see the actual progression.

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So, what are Tauopathies?

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Some examples would be TDP-43, proteinopathies,

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neurofilamentopathies, and Alzheimer's disease.

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Now,

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you can evaluate someone like this for amyloid

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in the brain by using F-18 amyloid PET.

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There are three or four agents that are available.

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We won't delve into those.

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But I will say that if you don't have any

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enhancement at all,

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it's a good rule out for ALZ.

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She did not have one, but if she did,

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it would be positive.

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But the number one biomarker,

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as we've discussed,

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is hippocampal volume loss.

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And she totally has it.

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She had it when she had MCI,

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but she has it even more profoundly now,

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five years later.

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You can see the AP dimension of the

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hippocampus is decreased.

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Now, cerebral amyloid occurs in normal individuals.

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It increases in the brain with age.

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It's different than inflammatory or noninflammatory

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primary amyloid angiopathy,

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in which they get multiple low bar hemorrhages.

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That's not the case with standard ALZ.

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And then most patients,

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the beta amyloid precedes the deposition

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of Tau proteins in Alzheimer's disease.

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Do you have any other comments about this case?

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No. Laser and Pomeranz out.

Report

Description

Faculty

Stephen J Pomeranz, MD

Chief Medical Officer, ProScan Imaging. Founder, MRI Online

ProScan Imaging

Tags

Syndromes

Neuroradiology

Metabolic

MRI

Idiopathic

Brain

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