New PET Imaging Study Measures In-Vivo Tau Pathology in Basal Forebrain for Alzheimer's Research
A new study published in Nature's Neuropsychopharmacology journal details the successful measurement of in-vivo tau pathology in the basal forebrain (BF) using PET imaging. Researchers, including Theresa M. Harrison and William J. Jagust, utilized two different tau-PET tracers to demonstrate a statistically significant association between BF PET signal and global amyloid-beta (Aβ) burden. This research marks the first time BF tau-PET has been observed in unimpaired older adults, showing that early BF tau increases with advancing age and is negatively associated with BF and hippocampal volumes. The findings suggest that tau pathology in the BF, a region critical for cholinergic function and cognition, can be reliably measured with PET imaging, similar to established measurements in the entorhinal cortex (ERC).
