New radioactive drug can detect Alzheimer’s

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A radioactive tracer is being tested for the first time in Norway at St. Olavs Hospital and NTNU. The goal is to improve the detection of dementia diseases.
In late March, the first patients were tested with a radioactive medicine called MK6240. This drug is given to the patient before they are put into a PET-MRI machine that takes pictures of the brain. The special feature of the MK6240 tracer is that it seeks out and attaches itself to deposits in the brain that can be found in Alzheimer’s disease.
“We’ll combine the new tracer with two other tracers that reveal other types of disease processes in the brain that can lead to dementia. The patient is imaged with a PET-MRI scanner, enabling us to see both the uptake of trace substances and various types of disease and age-related changes that are best detected by MRI,” say NTNU professors Live Eikenes and Asta Håberg.
“The patient receives a comprehensive exam of the brain at the same time. This isn’t available anywhere else in the Nordic countries,” they said.
DIG DEEPER at Norwegian SciTech News:
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