- An international study carried out by the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS) in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) reveals new findings on the temporal evolution of a common age-related pathology called primary age-related tauopathy (PART), which shares features with Alzheimer's disease.
- The research uses an innovative neuroimaging technology to detect people with PART by means of positron emission tomography (PET), and it shows that these people have a very different, and more benign, clinical and pathological course compared to patients with Alzheimer's disease. This suggests that this highly prevalent pathology in the ageing population requires a different therapeutic approach to Alzheimer's disease and that PET technology could be useful as a diagnostic biomarker for this condition.
Seville, October 19th, 2023
Alzheimer's disease is pathologically characterised by the abnormal accumulation of two distinct proteins in brain tissue, tau protein and amyloid protein. However, some older people show an abnormal accumulation of tau protein in the absence of amyloid plaques, a condition called primary age-related tauopathy (PART). Until now, clinicians have faced several unresolved questions about this condition: will these patients eventually develop Alzheimer's disease, or is it a different pathology?.
Now, a new research study coordinated at the IBiS by Dr. Michel Grothe, principal investigator of the neuroimaging line of the IBiS Movement Disorders group, has managed to provide some answers to these questions, which could open up new therapeutic avenues for this highly prevalent neurodegenerative disease in the ageing population.