Neuroimaging provides insights into new treatment options for Alzheimer's disease

Amsterdam, November 10, 2009 -- With about 35 million people around the world suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) by the year 2010 and an expectation that these numbers will double every twenty years with approximately 115 million cases by 2050, pressure on healthcare systems worldwide will be intense. In a special issue of the journal Behavioural Neurology, twelve contributions from an international group of researchers discuss imaging techniques that may contribute to early diagnosis and advancements in treatment for this devastating disease.

As life expectancy increases across the globe, the incidence of AD rises dramatically. Currently, AD care costs US Medicare and Medicaid and businesses over $148 billion dollars per year. With an aging population, these costs could potentially triple by 2050. With the prevalence of AD doubling with every decade of life after age 75, merely delaying the onset of AD by five years would produce a 50% decrease in the prevalence of disease.

According to Guest Editor Adam S. Fleisher, M.D., M.A.S., Associate Director of Brain Imaging at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute, "To effectively target prevention therapies at the pre-clinical stage of the disease, we must develop biomarkers which accurately predict future dementia. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) offer great promise as biomarkers for identifying underlying structural, functional and disease specific pathology in AD, MCI and related disease processes."

In this volume, imaging experts present both reviews of the latest developments in this field as well as original work, supporting the conviction that neuroimaging will be of crucial importance in tackling this globally pervasive disease.

Behavioural Neurology: An International Journal with an Emphasis on Lesion and Imaging Studies that Explore Abnormal Human Cognition and Behaviour

Special Issue: Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment: New Insights from Imaging, Volume 21, Issues 1-2

Published by IOS Press

(Also published as a book edition: ISBN 978-1-60750-066-7, approx 140 pages, softcover, ?110/$160)

Guest Editor: Adam S. Fleisher

Table of Contents:

Structural neuroimaging in the detection and prognosis of pre-clinical and early AD

Christine Fennema-Notestine, Linda K. McEvoy, Donald J. Hagler, Jr., Mark W. Jacobson, Anders M. Dale and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

A comparative analysis of structural brain MRI in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

Jason Appel, Elizabeth Potter, Qian Shen, Gustavo Pantol, Maria T. Greig, David Loewenstein and Ranjan Duara

Fully-automated volumetric MRI with normative ranges: Translation to clinical practice

J.B. Brewer

CognitivepPhenotypes, brain morphometry and the detection of cognitive decline in preclinical AD

Mark W. Jacobson, Linda K. McEvoy, Anders Dale and Christine Fennema-Notestine

Diffusion tensor imaging in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment

G.T. Stebbins and C.M. Murphy

Changes in parahippocampal white matter integrity in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A diffusion tensor imaging study

E.J. Rogalski, C.M. Murphy, L. deToledo-Morrell, R.C. Shah, M.E. Moseley, R. Bammer and G.T. Stebbins

Large-scale functional brain network abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease: Insights from functional neuroimaging

Bradford C. Dickerson and Reisa A. Sperling

Functional MRI assessment of task-induced deactivation of the default mode network in Alzheimer's disease and at-risk older individuals

Maija Pihlajamäki and Reias A. Sperling

Pinpointing synaptic loss caused by Alzheimer's disease with fMRI

Adam M. Brickman, Scott A. Small and Adam Fleisher

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease with [18F]PET in mild and asymptomatic stages

Alexander Drzezga

Amyloid imaging in aging and dementia: Testing the amyloid hypothesis in vivo

G.D. Rabinovici and W.J. Jagust

Applications of neuroimaging to disease-modification trials in Alzheimer's disease

Adam S. Fleisher, Michael Donohue, Kewei Chen, James B. Brewer, Paul S. Aisen and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

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November 10, 2009