Can MRI be used for diagnosing MCI?
A. A positive use of improved MRI technology that I can envision in the future is the scanning of patients suspected with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI. This early form of AD affects memory, due in part to the speeding up of cell death within the brain. Currently, there are as many as three times more people with MCI than AD and these patients are at increased risk for future AD and other dementing diseases. I think one of the promising research areas in the future will entail enrolling healthy subjects in a clinical study and having them regularly take something such as Naprosyn or vitamin E or some other anti-inflammatory product for a period of time. These subjects would then have regular MRI scans of the brain to assess their rate of gray matter brain loss. This is an exciting area in prevention strategy because the scans will allow us to objectively gauge the potential to slow down brain tissue loss. Q. In brain research, where are we in terms of diagnostic imaging? A. We are
