Tau PET brain imaging could launch precision medicine era for Alzheimer's disease

University Of California San Francisco

Special to Village News

Brain imaging of pathological tau-protein “tangles” reliably predicts the location of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease patients a year or more in advance, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California San Francisco Memory and Aging Center. In contrast, the location of amyloid “plaques,” which have been the focus of Alzheimer’s research and drug development for decades, was found to be of little utility in predicting how damage would unfold as the disease progressed.

The results, published Jan. 1,...