Retinal Changes on OCT Angiography May Flag Early Alzheimer’s
Microvascular changes in the retina detected by using noninvasive optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography align well with imaging and biomarker evidence of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease, a new study shows, according to a Medscape report.
The technology detected a significantly larger foveal avascular zone among 14 participants with biomarker-positive positron emission tomography (PET) imaging compared with 16 other people without this preclinical sign of Alzheimer’s (0.30 mm2 vs 0.40 mm2; P = .002).
PET biomarker–positive patients (essentially patients with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease), had “a significantly increased size of the foveal avascular zone. It was robustly positive,” Gregory Van Stavern, MD, a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, said here at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 2018 Annual Meeting.