Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Biomarkers, JAMA, MRI / 22.05.2023
Alzheimer’s Disease: Study Finds tau-PET Imaging Increases Diagnostic Accuracy
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_60448" align="alignleft" width="128"] Dr. Smith[/caption]
Ruben Smith MD, PhD
Associate professor at Clinical Memory Research
Division of Neurology
Lund University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Since a few years it has become possible to visualize tau pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) using positron emission tomography (PET). The tau-PET radiotracer Flortaucipir (Tauvid) was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as an AD diagnostic tool. Since PET imaging is costly and exposes the patient to radioactivity we wanted to study the added clinical value of tau-PET in the diagnostic work-up of patients with cognitive symptoms, before widespread implementation in clinical practice.
Dr. Smith[/caption]
Ruben Smith MD, PhD
Associate professor at Clinical Memory Research
Division of Neurology
Lund University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Since a few years it has become possible to visualize tau pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) using positron emission tomography (PET). The tau-PET radiotracer Flortaucipir (Tauvid) was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as an AD diagnostic tool. Since PET imaging is costly and exposes the patient to radioactivity we wanted to study the added clinical value of tau-PET in the diagnostic work-up of patients with cognitive symptoms, before widespread implementation in clinical practice.
Catharina Svanborg M.D., Ph.D.
Professor at Lund University Department of Laboratory Medicine,
Division of Microbiology, Immunology and Glycobiology
Founder/Chairman of the Board at HAMLET Pharma
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Like many unexpected scientific developments, this finding was serendipitous. In our search for the molecular basis of host susceptibility to infection, we discovered that infection directly affects MYC levels.
Gene expression analysis revealed that MYC itself was inhibited and that genes regulated by MYC were affected in children with acute kidney infection. Rapid reductions in MYC levels was further confirmed by infecting human kidney cells with the pathogenic E. coli bacteria isolated from patients with acute pyelonephritis, allowing us to formulate the hypothesis that bacteria regulate host MYC levels during acute infection and to investigate the mechanism leading to this inhibition. This work was conducted by the 
Dr. Magnusson[/caption]
Karin Magnusson PT, PhD
Associate Researcher
Lund University and
Norwegian Institute of Public Health
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is one of the most common knee injuries, for which very limited data has been presented on the genetic contribution. Based on our knowledge of the role of genetics in the development of ACL-rupture related traits, such as joint hypermobility and knee osteoarthritis, we hypothesized that heritability might play a role also in ACL injury.
Using the Swedish Twin Registry, which is the world's largest twin registry and in this study including more than 88.000 twins, we had unique data to for the first time reliably estimate the heritability for this common knee injury. 