Accurate Diagnosis of 'Early-Onset Alzheimer's' Through PET Imaging

Professor Johanna's Research Team at Yonsei Gangnam Severance Hospital
Joint Study with UCSF Researchers in the US

A path to accurately diagnose 'early-onset Alzheimer's disease' occurring in middle age has been opened.

Professor Johanna Cho's research team at Yonsei University Gangnam Severance Hospital, in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), discovered important clues to improve the early diagnostic accuracy of early-onset Alzheimer's disease using amyloid and tau positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and to understand its pathogenesis.

Professor Johanna, Gangnam Severance Hospital

Most Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients develop symptoms in old age, after 65 years. However, about 10% of patients show symptoms earlier, which is called 'early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD).' EOAD symptoms begin in patients in their 50s to 60s, a period when most patients are actively engaged in social activities. It significantly affects patients' occupations, families, and social lives, and the social and familial burden is generally greater than that of typical late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

However, EOAD patients are fewer in number than typical AD patients and often exhibit atypical symptoms, making early diagnosis complex and large-scale clinical trials or studies difficult to conduct.

To overcome these limitations, Professor Johanna Cho's team studied the causes and diagnostic improvement methods of EOAD through the 'LEADS (Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer's Disease Study)' project, a global collaboration among multiple institutions researching early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

From 2018 to 2022, Professor Cho's team and UCSF researchers examined the distribution and concentration of amyloid and tau proteins in PET images of the brains of 321 EOAD patients and 87 cognitively normal individuals registered in the LEADS project.

As a result, they confirmed that EOAD patients have a greater amount of tau protein distributed across widespread brain regions compared to typical Alzheimer's patients. This indicates that EOAD causes more extensive functional loss clinically than typical late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Professor Johanna Cho stated, "This study revealed that amyloid and tau PET imaging can greatly assist in the early diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease," adding, "It will provide more accurate diagnosis and treatment directions for EOAD patients, who have been neglected in many previous studies."

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