2023-10-31 07:29:51
▶ Gangnam Severance Hospital, found out by measuring the amount of tau protein in the brain
Symptoms of senile dementia (Alzheimer’s disease) usually appear following the age of 65. Symptoms may appear in people in their 50s, and this is called ‘early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.’ The possibility of diagnosing this at an early stage has opened up.
On the 27th, Professor Hanna Jo of the Department of Neurology at Gangnam Severance Hospital announced that they had found a way to increase diagnostic accuracy through joint research with a research team at the University of California, San Francisco.
Most Alzheimer’s disease symptoms begin in old age, but regarding 10% of patients develop symptoms earlier than this. If you suffer from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in your 50s and are socially active, it will affect your job and increase the burden on your family and society.
However, compared to general Alzheimer’s disease, the number of patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is small and many cases show atypical symptoms, making initial diagnosis complicated. There are also difficulties in conducting large-scale clinical trials or research.
To overcome these limitations, the research team studied the causes of this disease and ways to improve diagnosis through the ‘LEADS (Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease Study) Project’, in which institutions from several countries collaborate to study early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
The research team used positron emission tomography to determine the distribution and concentration of amyloid-β protein and tau protein in the brains of 321 early-onset Alzheimer’s disease patients and 87 normal people registered in the LEADS project from 2018 to 2022. (PET) test was used.
As a result, it was confirmed that early-onset Alzheimer’s disease patients have a larger amount of tau protein distributed over a wide area of the brain than regular Alzheimer’s disease patients.
This means that early-onset Alzheimer’s disease clinically causes more functional impairment.
Professor Johanna Jo said, “This study revealed that PET imaging of amyloid-beta protein and tau protein can help diagnose early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” adding, “Patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease who have been neglected in many studies so far. “We expect to be able to provide more accurate diagnosis, treatment strategies, and directions to patients in the future,” he said.
The results of this study were published in the international academic journal ‘Alzheimer & Dementia’.
Daeik Kwon, medical reporter>
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