Published in MPW, 5 Jan 2015
A new window into the development of Alzheimer’s disease may have been opened up by researchers in Germany who have combined two non-invasive imaging techniques to study the formation of proteinaceous deposits known as ?-amyloid plaques. Using both PET and MRI, the researchers followed the development of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice that have a similar disease, and found a direct connection between the plaques’ formation in cerebral blood vessels and reduced blood flow in the brain (Nature Medicine 20 1485).
Amyloid plaques are fibrous protein aggregates whose formation has been associated with the development of various neurodegenerative disorders. Bernd Pichler, from the Werner Siemens Imaging Center at Tübingen University, and colleagues genetically modified mice so that the plaques would form either in the brain tissue and in the cerebral vessels (APP23 mice), or in brain tissue only (APPPS1 mice). […]
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