{"id":80684,"date":"2018-07-16T08:42:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T15:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/new-pet-scan-for-alzheimers-disease-directly-measures-synaptic-loss"},"modified":"2018-07-16T08:42:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T15:42:21","slug":"new-pet-scan-for-alzheimers-disease-directly-measures-synaptic-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/new-pet-scan-for-alzheimers-disease-directly-measures-synaptic-loss","title":{"rendered":"New PET scan for Alzheimer\u2019s disease directly measures synaptic loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-pet-scan-for-alzheimers-disease-directly-measures-synaptic-loss.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Exciting new research from Yale University has revealed a new method that could potentially objectively diagnose if a person is suffering through the early stages of Alzheimer\u2019s disease using a non-invasive PET scan.<\/p>\n<p>A major roadblock slowing down effective Alzheimer\u2019s research is our inability to easily, or clearly, diagnose the disease at its early stages. Several <a href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/alzheimers-blood-test\/53215\/\" target=\"_blank\">blood tests<\/a> are being explored that can identify biomarkers signaling the early presence of the disease, but nothing has proved conclusive enough to move into general clinical use.<\/p>\n<p>The new Yale University innovation uses PET imaging technology to evaluate cognitive decline by effectively measuring how much synaptic loss or degradation has occurred in a patient\u2019s brain. To quantify a person\u2019s \u201csynaptic density\u201d the researchers homed in on a protein called SV2A. This protein is found in nearly all healthy synapses, but as those connections degrade, so does the presence of SV2A.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/pet-scan-alzheimers-disease-diagnose-yale\/55472\/\">https:\/\/newatlas.com\/pet-scan-alzheimers-disease-diagnose-yale\/55472\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exciting new research from Yale University has revealed a new method that could potentially objectively diagnose if a person is suffering through the early stages of Alzheimer\u2019s disease using a non-invasive PET scan. A major roadblock slowing down effective Alzheimer\u2019s research is our inability to easily, or clearly, diagnose the disease at its early stages. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}