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

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 (99m)Tc-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (HMPAO) during memory provocation with faces and names, followed by an rCBF-SPECT study. The rCBF (99m)Tc-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.