The Metabolic Cerebral Imaging in Incipient Dementia study is an ongoing national clinical trial sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).Their interim data has found that patients whose doctors gleaned information from a brain PET scan performed with the tracer FDG – which measures energy being used throughout regions of the brain – did better over two years than those whose doctors were randomized to not have access to the scan information.
Study principal investigator Daniel Silverman, a UCLA professor of molecular and medical pharmacology said “During the subsequent two years after their PET scans, these patients had superior executive function, better memory abilities and greater preservation of overall cognitive function, providing the first direct evidence that patients whose early Alzheimer’s disease is revealed by FDG-PET will do better than patients with the same condition, but with their brain metabolism pattern remaining unknown to their doctors and themselves.”
