18F PET with florbetaben for the early diagnosis of Alzheime | Figure 1

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18F PET with florbetaben for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease dementia and other dementias

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In people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), does using a 18F PET scan with florbetaben predict progression to Alzheimer's disease dementia (ADD) and other dementias?

Cochrane Review; 1 study (45 participants with MCI); funded by the test manufacturer.

Key findings:

Based on only one study, the 18F-florbetaben PET scan, as a single test with visual assessment, correctly classified 100% of the participants who will progress to ADD and 83% of the participants who did not progress to ADD at four years follow-up. This means in a cohort with 100 participants with MCI, 47 of whom will progress to ADD, we would expect that all those 47 MCI participants would test positive with the 18F-florbetaben scan and that 0 participants would be falsely negative (i.e. none of the 47 participants would have a negative test and yet progress to ADD). In addition, we would expect 44 of 53 participants who did not progress to ADD to be 18F-florbetaben-negative and 9 to be falsely positive (i.e. 9 of the 53 participants would have a positive test but not progress to ADD).

The small size of the included study lowered our confidence on these estimates of accuracy. It is possible that the test is considerably less accurate than these results suggest.

18F-florbetaben imaging is a promising test to predict the progression from MCI to ADD; but more studies are needed.

Read the full Cochrane Review here

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