Cerebral and hippocampal volumetry in early Alzheimer´s disease

With an aging population, the number of patients with dementia is increasing, and will potentially become a major social health cost issue. Alzheimer´s disease (AD) accounts for more than 40% of dementias in the elderly. The clinical manifestation of AD may be subtle, and early diagnosis is difficult but crucial, to enable early drug intervention and improved prognosis. In order to early diagnose AD, we applied MR volumetry techniques for the hippocampus and cerebrum in an attempt to detect the early changes of AD. From an eligible population of 103 AD patients, 11 with early AD were identified and had MRI performed. 12 normal age-matched controls were also recruited. All AD patients evaluation was based on the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria. We compared cerebral and hippocampal volumes of the two groups: normal and AD patients, and found statistically significant difference of total brain volume and hippocampal volume between the two groups. This suggests that, though technically challenging and manually cum time intensive, MR volumetry in the early AD patients is useful and facilitates the detection of the early changes of hippocampal atrophy.