Mount Sinai
Performs First Imaging Test to Detect Alzheimer's Disease in the Clinical
Setting
The new
technique is expected to play a critical role in Alzheimer's disease diagnosis
and in research leading to a cure.
NEW YORK,
NY – June 20, 2012 /Press Release/
The Mount
Sinai Medical Center is the first institution in New York State to use in the
clinical setting a newly approved imaging technique to detect Alzheimer's
disease (AD) in people who are cognitively impaired. Until now, physicians have
been limited in their ability to diagnose AD, guided almost exclusively by a
patient's mental and behavioral symptoms and family history. The innovative
technique—recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is
not only expected to play a critical role in the diagnosis of AD, but in drug
research, and the design of clinical trials leading to a cure.
Under the
new procedure, patients are injected with a radioactive agent called
florbetapir, which binds to the plaques that are hallmark symptoms of AD. The
physician then uses a positron emission tomography (PET) scan to highlight the
plaques that are binded to the agent. If a large amount of florbetapir is
visualized on the image, the patient may have AD. If no plaques are found, this
could eliminate AD as a possible cause of the patient's cognitive impairment.
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