FYI...................
New Imaging Agent For Parkinson's Disease
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital have developed a new imaging agent for Parkinson's
disease that could allow clinicians to diagnose the
disease more accurately and earlier in its progression than is currently
possible, as well
as to utilize imaging technologies that are cheaper,
faster and widely available.
In four articles to be published in the June Synapse,
scientists describe how the imaging agent Altropane visualized the
degree of nerve
loss in the brains of people in different stages of
Parkinson's. The scientists suggest that the chemical, in addition to
facilitating definitive
diagnoses, could help researchers track the success of
experimental treatments and possibly identify presymptomatic patients to
use in
studies of this common, but poorly understood
neurodegenerative disease.
