
Advanced PET scans reveal that late-life depression and bipolar disorder may signal early neurodegenerative changes before dementia symptoms emerge.
Key Details
- 1Study involved 52 late-life mood disorder (LLMD) patients and 47 controls using PET imaging for tau and amyloid proteins.
- 2~50% of LLMD patients showed abnormal tau accumulation vs. 15% of controls; 29% had amyloid vs. 2% of controls.
- 3Autopsy of 208 brain cases confirmed higher tau-related pathologies in those with late-life mood symptoms.
- 4Pathological protein buildup detectable an average of 7.3 years before cognitive or motor symptoms.
- 5Study used two PET tracers to capture diverse tau and amyloid pathologies.
- 6Findings support tau-PET as a tool for early detection of neurodegenerative diseases in psychiatric populations.
Why It Matters

Source
EurekAlert
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