A Clinical and Neuroimage Study in Alzheimer’S Disease and Fronto-Temporal Dementia

Dementia is a common neurodegenerative syndrome in aged population. Among them Alzheimer’s disease (AD) represents the most common form of the degenerative disease. One of the others is frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The characteristic pathological findings in AD include presence of senile plaques and accumulation of the neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The pathognomonic change of diagnosis of AD is -amyloid (Aβ) in senile plaques but the severity of AD is related with the accumulation of NFT that contain tau protein. With recent advance of molecular imaging of amyloid deposits, these amyloid β imaging agents have promised as a 20151216 version I 2 potential biomarker for AD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients. Our previous study with brain 18F-florbetapir PET (18F-AV-45 PET) had revealed a beneficial effect in the differentiation among patients with AD, aMCI and normal control. In addition, the neuroimages study also showed that the amyloid depositis could be very prominent in the early stage of aMCI patients. In our recent study with brain 18F-AV-45 PET, a continuous increase of uptake of 18F-AV-45 in AD patients remained unclear in a period of follow-up. Patients with FTD may contain several different insoluble tau proteins including 3R tau or 4R tau. Clinically FTD is heterogeneous and can be subclassified as behavioral variant (or frontal variant) and primary progressive aphasia (or language variant). In a previous study, we found that no uptake of amyloid deposition in FTD particularly in primary progressive aphasia. Recently a new imaging tracer, 18F-THK-5351, targeting on PHF-tau has been developed for PET scan. The 18F-THK-5351 PET scan is a sensitive target tracer in the identification and progression of tau protein in AD patients. Therefore we include the tau protein images in this 3-year longitudinal follow-up study for AD and FTD patients. Approximately 150 patinets with 40 aMCI, 30 mild AD, 30 moderate AD, and 20 FTD as well as 30 normal healthy controls will be recruited in this study. Totally 4 scans with 2 18F-THK 5351 PET and 2 18F-AV-45 PET scans will be performed within 3 years. Our prospective aims with this new image tracers are to understand the diagnosis, disease progression, and prognosis of AD and FTD patients. With these two neuroimages tracers of 18F-AV-45 and 18F-THK-5351, we will correlate the clinical features and the deposits of amyloid and tau protein in aMCI, AD and FTD patients.

Project ID:PC10507-0259
External Project ID:MOST105-2314-B182-005