The positron emission tomography (PET) scanning turned out to be a useful way of diagnosing the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. It allows doctors to see whether a person has "plaques" in the brain that are an indication of the disease. These so called “plaques” are made of beta-amyloid and other compounds.

Ville Leinonen, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Kuopio, Finland is the one who conducted the study. He and his team studied ten patients who apparently didn’t suffer from severe dementia and had undergone a biopsy of their frontal cortex because of a suspected abnormal increase of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. The subjects of the study were injected with a marker known as carbon 11–labeled Pittsburgh Compound B ([11C]PiB) and then underwent a 90-minute PET scan. The conclusion they reached was that patients who had beta-amyloid plaques in their brain biopsy specimen displayed a higher uptake of [11C]PiB in certain brain areas as compared with those who did not have such accumulations.

Until now doctors could not be sure if their patients were suffering from Alzheimer's until the brain was examined after death in an autopsy.

The study was published online this week in the journal Archives of Neurology and will probably be included in this October’s printed issue as well. 

26 million people have Alzheimer's at the moment. This study shows PET scans may become a useful tool to diagnose Alzheimer's disease, a fatal and incurable mind-robbing ailment that is the most common form of dementia in the elderly, Leinonen explained.