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Memory-provoked rCBF-SPECT as a diagnostic tool in Alzheimer’s disease?

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European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a primary degenerative disease that progressively affects all brain functions, with devastating consequences for the patient, the patient’s family and society. Rest regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) could have a strategic role in differentiating between AD patients and normal controls, but its use for this purpose has a low discriminatory capacity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the diagnostic sensitivity of rCBF single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) could be increased by using an episodic memory task provocation, i.e. memory-provoked rCBF-SPECT (MP-SPECT).

Methods

Eighteen persons (73.2±4.8 years) with mild AD and 18 healthy elderly (69.4±3.9 years) were included in the study. The subjects were injected with 99mTc-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (HMPAO) during memory provocation with faces and names, followed by an rCBF-SPECT study. The rCBF 99mTc-HMPAO SPECT images were analysed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM2). Peaks with a false discovery rate corrected value of 0.05 were considered significant.

Results

On MP-SPECT, the AD group showed a significant rCBF reduction in the left parietal cortex in comparison with healthy elderly. At rest, no significant group differences were seen.

Conclusion

Memory provocation increased the sensitivity of rCBF-SPECT for the detection of AD-related blood flow changes in the brain at the group level. Further studies are needed to evaluate MP-SPECT as a diagnostic tool at the individual level. If a higher sensitivity for AD at the individual level is verified in future studies, a single MP-SPECT study might be sufficient in the clinical setting.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by Lion, KK (kunskap och kompetens), the Medical Faculty, Umeå University, the Swedish Research Council and the Borgerskapet of Umeå Research Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiation Sciences, Diagnostic Radiology, Umeå University, Umeå University Hospital, 901 85, Umeå, Sweden

    Torbjörn Sundström & Katrine Å. Riklund

  2. Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Geriatric Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Eva Elgh & Birgitta Näsman

  3. Department of Radiation Sciences, Radiation Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Anne Larsson

  4. Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Lars Nyberg

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  1. Torbjörn Sundström
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  2. Eva Elgh
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Correspondence to Katrine Å. Riklund.

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Sundström, T., Elgh, E., Larsson, A. et al. Memory-provoked rCBF-SPECT as a diagnostic tool in Alzheimer’s disease?. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 33, 73–80 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-005-1874-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-005-1874-0

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