Editor's Choice Academic Journal Main Category: Parkinson's Disease Also Included In: MRI / PET / Ultrasound Article Date: 05 Oct 2012 - 8:00 PDT

Current ratings for: Brain Scan Can Predict The Course Of Parkinson's Disease

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The authors explained that this brain scan can identify which Parkinson's patients are at risk of severe disease, thus enabling doctors to better manage and treat their symptoms.

Some specialists already use the DaTscan when confirming a Parkinson's diagnosis after a physical examination.

However, the DaTscan can only help in the diagnosis to a certain extent. It can point towards Parkinsonism, but cannot help the doctor distinguish between many similar disorders, of which classic Parkinson's disease is one.

GE Healthcare announced the availability of DaTscan (Ioflupane I 123 Injection) in June 2011.

When using the DaTscan, the patient is injected with a small quantity of a radioactive contrast agent which binds to dopamine transporters in the brain. Then, a scanner is used to measure how much of the contrast agent there is in the brain, and where exactly it is. People with Parkinson's have fewer neurons with dopamine transporters, thus, lower amounts of the radioactive agent appear in their brain scans, compared to "healthy" individuals.

Bernard Ravina, M.D., M.S.C.E., and team set out to determine whether the DaTscan might be used to predict the long-term progression of Parkinson's disease. They looked at the DaTscan images of 491 individuals who had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's - none of them had yet started on standard medications for the disease. All the patients were participants in the Longitudinal and Biomarker Study in PD (LABS-PD), a clinical trial funded in part by the Parkinson's Disease Foundation.

The LABS-PD study had been a long-term one, thus the team were able to compare participants' DaTscan results, which were taken just after diagnosis and then again 22 months later, with information from their yearly health assessments.

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Brain Scan Can Predict The Course Of Parkinson's Disease