The most general preclinical sign of Alzheimer’s is known to be depression, so a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital set out to explore the relationship between the build-up of amyloid beta in the brain and specific symptoms of depression.  The study followed 270 cognitively healthy senior citizens aged between 62 and 90 years old. Over a span of five years these subjects underwent positron emission tomography (PET) scans to measure cortical levels of amyloid beta.  The results clearly pointed to a correlation between increasing anxious-depressive symptoms and higher levels of amyloid beta in the brain. {read more here}

Recent advances in brain imaging [PET] have enabled scientists to show for the first time that a key protein which causes nerve cell death spreads throughout the brain in Alzheimer’s disease – and hence that blocking its spread may prevent the disease from taking hold.  {read more here}

Researchers at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, have demonstrated that a new radiotracer, 2-¹⁸F-fluorodeoxysorbitol (¹⁸F-FDS), can identify and track bacterial infection in lungs better than current imaging methods and is able to differentiate bacterial infection from inflammation. The study is the featured basic science article in the January issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. {read more here}

The heterogeneity of malignant tumors can impede the success of radiotherapy, as characteristics such as vasculature, metabolic activity, proliferation and cell death can vary throughout a tumor. The ability to identify therapy-resistant areas of a tumor may facilitate more effective and individualized treatment. {read more here}