How Brian Imaging Could Help Predict Alzheimers - Essay Example

Brain imaging technology has brought a significant amount of promise to the study of Alzheimer’s disease. Although more evidence is needed and more studies need to be done there seems to be a breakthrough in the diagnosis and prediction of the disease with relation to the use of this technology. Drugs have not been successful because “the drugs were tested too late in the progression of the disease (Singer, 2010).” This paper will give a summary of the article ‘How Brain Imaging Could Help Predict Alzheimer’s.

’ It looks at the potential of the technology over conventional methods.To date there is a lack of reliable drug that can be used to decelerate the progress of Alzheimer’s disease. Although many drugs have been tested scientists and drug manufacturers blame the timing when these drugs have been administered to patients of the disease. They claim that many of the drugs are administered at a time when the progress of the disease makes it difficult for any significant improvement to take place.

The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed gamma secretase inhibitor but this drug didn’t prove successful. Sangram Sisodia, director of the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago explained that the drug was tested on the wrong group of patients. New studies, however, have shown that there is hope for Alzheimer’s patients. Recent presentations at the Society for Neuroscience conference recently held in San Diego showed that brain imaging may help in the prediction of the disease.

Researchers believed that changes in the brain will help to qualify patients to undergo clinical tests of new drugs. They are also hopeful that brain imaging will help in the selection of persons for clinical testing before dementia is developed.Reliable drugs testing can become possible if persons found with mild cognitive impairment are used for clinical testing as indicated by recent researches. Not everyone who has this condition will develop Alzheimer’s as revealed by a graduate student of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

The study highlighted the substantia innominata section of the brain. Of the 47 persons who had mild cognitive impairment, 22 developed Alzheimer’s over a six year period. They were found to have significant thinning in three connected areas of the cortex involved in memory, attention, and integration of sensor and motor integration.Animal studies research also corroborate this finding. Studies show that the connections between neurons known as synapsesa are the first part of the brain to be impacted.

A second study revealed that the caudate nucleus section of the brain shrunk significantly in elderly persons diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. MRI scans were carried out on 400 elderly persons ranging from healthy to severely impaired. Those persons who had the disease had caudate that was seven percent smaller than that of healthy persons. Persons who had mild cognitive impairment also had smaller caudate than healthy persons.An ongoing study in Colombia is focusing on families that carry a genetic mutation.

Since scientists are able to predict the development of the disease in persons who carry the mutation they will be better able to study the brain and identify early changes. Brain imaging technology is accepted in our society. It is widely used in hospitals and research centers worldwide and is considered to be a safe method. This technique is widely accepted because it can be used to examine the human brain without invasive neurosurgery (Demitri, 2007). When it is proven that brain imaging is effective in predicting Alzheimer’s disease it will even be more acknowledged and used more extensively in the medical field as well as the wider society.

ReferencesDemitri, M. (2007). Types of Brain Imaging Techniques. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/types-of-brain-imaging-techniques/Singer, E. (2010). How Brain Imaging Could Help Predict Alzheimer’s. Technology Review. Retrieved from http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26754/?ref=rss