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Longitudinal assessment of cerebral 5-HT2A receptors in healthy elderly volunteers: an [18F]-altanserin PET study

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

Abstract

Purpose

The serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptor is of interest in several psychiatric and neurological diseases. In the present study we investigated the longitudinal stability of 5-HT2A receptors and the stability of the quantification procedure in the elderly in order to be able to study elderly patients with neuropsychiatric diseases on a longitudinal basis.

Methods

[18F]-Altanserin PET was used to quantify 5-HT2A receptors in 12 healthy elderly individuals at baseline and at 2 years in six volumes of interest. A bolus/infusion protocol was used to achieve the binding potential, BPP. The reproducibility as assessed in terms of variability and the reliability as assessed in terms of intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used to compare inter- and intraobserver stability and to evaluate the effects of increasing complexity of partial volume (PV) corrections. We also compared the stability of our measurements over 2 years with the stability of data from an earlier study with 2-week test–retest measurements.

Results

BPP was unaltered at follow-up without the use of PV correction and when applying two-tissue PV correction, test–retest reproducibility was 12–15% and reliability 0.45–0.67 in the large bilateral regions such as the parietal, temporal, occipital and frontal cortices, while orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortical regions were less stable. The use of PV correction decreased the variability but also decreased the between-subject variation, thereby worsening the reliability.

Conclusion

In healthy elderly individuals, brain 5-HT2A receptor binding remains stable over 2 years, and acceptable reproducibility and reliability in larger regions and high intra- and interobserver stability allow the use of [18F]-altanserin in longitudinal studies of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for financial support from the 1991 Pharmacy Foundation, the Health Insurance Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, the Danish Medical Research Council, and University Hospital Rigshospitalet. The John and Birthe Meyer Foundation is gratefully acknowledged for donation of the cyclotron and PET scanner. The study was funded in part by the EC-FP5 project NCI-MCI, QLK6-CT-2000-00502.

Conflicts of interest

None.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurobiology Research Unit, N9201, University Hospital Rigshospitalet, Blegdamsvej 9, DK-2100, Copenhagen O, Denmark

    Lisbeth Marner, Gitte M. Knudsen, Steven Haugbøl & Steen G. Hasselbalch

  2. PET and Cyclotron Unit, Department of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Søren Holm

  3. Danish Research Center for Magnetic Resonance, Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark

    William Baaré

  4. Memory Disorders Research Unit, The Neuroscience Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Steen G. Hasselbalch

Authors
  1. Lisbeth Marner
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  2. Gitte M. Knudsen
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  3. Steven Haugbøl
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  4. Søren Holm
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  5. William Baaré
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  6. Steen G. Hasselbalch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisbeth Marner.

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Marner, L., Knudsen, G.M., Haugbøl, S. et al. Longitudinal assessment of cerebral 5-HT2A receptors in healthy elderly volunteers: an [18F]-altanserin PET study. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 36, 287–293 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-008-0945-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-008-0945-4

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