© 2003 BMJ Publishing Group
EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
Parkinson’s disease
Objective measures for the progression of Parkinson’s disease
Auckland Hospital, New Zealand;
bsnow@adhb.govt.nz
Objective measure of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic deficit: evidence that SPECT does the job
Keywords: Parkinson’s disease; SPECT; PET
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A persisting frustration in the diagnosis, treatment, and research of Parkinson’s disease is the lack of an objective measure of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic deficit. In particular, we need a tool to monitor the progress of the neuronal degeneration. This is very difficult to achieve clinically in Parkinson’s disease because of the complex clinical presentation and the confounding effect of symptomatic therapy. Although PET, with markers of presynaptic dopaminergic function such as 6-fluorodopa, is an accepted measuring tool, PET is complex, expensive, cumbersome, and not widely available. The alternative is SPECT, and Winogrodzka et al on pp 294–2981 of this issue provide evidence that SPECT does the job.
Winogrodzka et al took 50 patients with Parkinson’s disease and performed SPECT scans 12 months apart. For their tracer, they chose [123I] ß-CIT, which binds to the presynaptic dopamine transporters. They showed an 8% decline in binding density. This matches
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- [123I]ß-CIT SPECT is a useful method for monitoring dopaminergic degeneration in early stage Parkinson’s disease
- A Winogrodzka, P Bergmans, J Booij, E A van Royen, J C Stoof, and E C Wolters
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2003 74: 294-298.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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