Amyloid imaging aids clinicopathological diagnosis of AD

Dementia is common in Parkinson’s disease (PD), because the brain pathology of Parkinson’s can affect memory. But it is very hard to determine which PD patients have dementia caused by PD and which have PD and Alzheimer’s. In a new study, researchers performed autopsies on the brains of subjects that had been diagnosed with PD without dementia (PDND), PD dementia (PDD) and PD with coexistent Alzheimer's disease (PDAD), as well as patients with AD without PD and normal control subjects (NC). Amyloid plaque densities in the brain were graded and scored using amyloid imaging. Plaque density scores in AD and PDAD cases were higher than PDD, PDND, and NC. PDAD patients have much denser accumulations of amyloid plaques in the striatal area of the brain than PDD patients. According to Thomas G. Beach of Banner Sun Health Research Institute, the use of amyloid imaging for determining the presence of striatal plaques could help clinically distinguish PDD from PDAD.