MRI Technique May Predict Progress of Dementias

A new technique for analysing brain images offers the possibility of using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the rate of progression and physical path of many degenerative brain diseases, report scientists of the University of California, San Francisco.

The technique also supports mounting evidence that dementias spread through the brain along specific neuronal pathways in the same manner as prion diseases.

The scientists employed new computer modelling techniques to realistically predict the physical progression of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) using images of 14 healthy brains. The models were based on whole-brain tractography, an MRI technique that maps the neural pathways, or "communication wires," that connect different areas of the brain. The spread of disease along those pathways, as predicted by the models, closely matched actual MRI images of brain degeneration in 18 Alzheimer's patients and 18 FTD patients.

"The results need to be replicated, but they suggest that, by using this approach, we can predict the location and course of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer's, FTD and other degenerative brain diseases, based on just one MRI taken at the outset of the disease," said senior author Michael Weiner. "This would be extremely useful in planning treatment, and in helping patients and families know what to expect as dementia progresses."

Weiner said that the results were "consistent with an emerging concept that brain damage occurs in these neurodegenerative diseases in a diffusive, prion-like propagation."

A prion is an infectious, misfolded form of a normal protein. These proteins leave destructive amyloid deposits in the brains in which they develop, causing degeneration and eventual death. They are responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" disease, in cattle.

"The idea of a prion-like mode of progression in dementias, which many scientists are beginning to support, is that the misfolded protein in one neuron will infect a neighbouring brain cell, causing proteins in that cell to misfold in turn, and that the spread of these misfolded proteins flows along certain networks in the brain," explained Weiner. "For instance, in Alzheimer's, there is a spread of amyloid protein along the memory network. This paper reinforces the idea that the damage occurs progressively along that network and others."

REHACARE.de; Source: University of California - San Francisco