Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most frequent form of degenerative dementia and its early diagnosis is essential for effective treatment. Functional imaging modalities including Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) are often used with such an aim. However, conventional evaluation of SPECT images relies on manual reorientation and visual evaluation of tomographic slices which is time consuming, subjective and therefore prone to error. Our aim is to show an automatic Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system for improving the early detection of the AD. For this purpose, affine invariant descriptors of 3D SPECT image can be useful. The method consists of four steps: evaluation of invariant descriptors obtained using spherical harmonic analysis, statistical testing of their significance, application of regularized binary index models, and model verification via leave-one-out cross-validation scheme. The second approach is based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier and visualization with use of self-organizing maps. Our approaches were tested on SPECT data from 11 adult patients with definite Alzheimer's disease and 10 adult patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) who were used as controls. A significant difference between SPECT spherical cuts of AD group and ALS group was both visually and numerically evaluated.
Peripheral insulin resistance is associated with decreasing adiponectin and increasing leptin plasma levels, and also with cognitive decline. The effects of adipokines on brain function have been published from both animal and human studies. In particular, the influence of leptin and adiponectin on the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been extensively investigated. However, the association between adipsin and AD is as yet unknown. In 37 patients with AD and 65 controls that followed the same study protocol, we tested whether adiponectin, leptin, and adipsin could be used as biomarkers in the early stages of AD. In contrast with conclusions of cognition studies in insulin resistant states, our study found a correlation of impaired neuropsychological performance with increasing adiponectin and decreasing leptin in AD patients. Nevertheless, no significant differences between patients and controls were found. AD women had significantly increased adipsin compared to controls, and there was a positive correlation of adipsin with age and disease duration. Although adipokines do not appear to be suitable biomarkers for early AD diagnosis, they certainly play a role in the pathogenesis of AD. Further studies will be needed to explain the cause of the adipokine “breaking point” that leads to the pathogenesis of overt AD., Markéta Vaňková, Gabriela Vacínová, Josef Včelák, Daniela Vejražková, Petra Lukášová, Robert Rusina, Iva Holmerová, Eva Jarolímová, Hana Vaňková, Běla Bendlová., and Obsahuje bibliografii