Authors: Robert Perneczky Janine DiehlSchmid Alexander Drzezga Alexander Kurz
Publish Date: 2007/01/12
Volume: 34, Issue: 7, Pages: 1082-1087
Abstract
The association of the regional cerebral metabolic rate of glucose utilisation rCMRglc and years of schooling has been extensively studied in Alzheimer’s disease AD The results suggest that brain reserve capacity BRC allows patients with more years of schooling to cope better with AD pathology The objective of this study was to provide initial evidence for BRC in frontotemporal dementia FTDTwentynine patients with FTD and 16 healthy age and educationmatched controls underwent PET imaging of the brain with 18Ffluoro2deoxyglucose A group comparison of rCMRglc was conducted between patients and controls and the output was saved as region of interest ROI A linear regression analysis with education as the independent and rCMRglc as the dependent variable adjusted for age gender and total score on the CERAD neuropsychological battery was conducted in SPM2 over the preassigned ROIPatients showed a reduced rCMRglc in almost the entire prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex as compared with controls p 005 corrected for multiple comparisons The regression analysis revealed a significant negative association between years of schooling and rCMRglc in the bilateral inferior frontal cortex p 0001 uncorrected for multiple comparisons which was independent of demographic variables and cognitive performance level There was a strong negative correlation of rCMRglc and education r = −045This study was partly funded by the Federal Ministry of Research and Education as part of a national collaboration on dementia Kompetenznetz Demenzen grant N° 01GI0420 and the Komission für Klinische Forschung Klinikum rechts der Isar München grant N° 8765 The sponsors played no role in the design and conduct of the study the collection management analysis and interpretation of the data or the preparation review and approval of the manuscript The authors do not report any conflicts of interest
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