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Nicotine Could Lead to Early Diagnosis of
Alzheimer’s
Feb. 1, 2005 - The chemical nicotine--a main
ingredient in tobacco--may hold promise in the early diagnosis of
Alzheimer's disease, give insight into therapeutic interventions for
nicotine addiction and possibly complement the diagnosis of certain
forms of lung cancer, according to a study in the January issue of the
Society of Nuclear Medicine's Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Researchers are examining nicotine's cognitive,
behavioral and addictive actions, and, by looking at targets in the
brain where nicotine acts, researchers hope to address several major
health problems, said SNM member Jogeshwar Mukherjee, Ph.D., associate
professor in residence at the department of psychiatry and human
behavior, Brain Imaging Center, at the University of California at
Irvine (UCI).
A team of researchers from UCI and the Kettering
Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio, found that imaging studies with a new
fluorine-18 labeled imaging agent, nifrolidine, complement other ongoing
positron emission tomography (PET) studies currently underway with
nicotine-like PET imaging agents.
Nifrolidine was developed to specifically bind to a
receptor (protein) that is present in the human and nonhuman brain; this
receptor is involved in several brain functions, particularly cognition
and certain aspects of learning and memory, according to Mukherjee.
By binding at the same place as nicotine,
nifrolidine helps to measure how and where nicotine acts. PET studies
can be performed with nifrolidine to provide information on the receptor
present in various regions of the brain.
"Research has shown that with Alzheimer's disease
there is a gradual loss of these receptors; therefore, there is a
potential of early diagnostic value in nifrolidine-PET imaging," he
said.
[NEWS/_adstuff/AD-Links-Sections/AlzheimersButton.htm]In addition, nicotine addiction and lung cancer may
be linked to this receptor. The availability of a good PET imaging agent
for this receptor will allow preclinical and clinical studies, leading
to better understanding of different medical conditions and eventually
helping in their diagnosis and treatment, said Mukherjee.
Additional research and work with animal subjects
must be completed before this tracer can be used to demonstrate
applications in human studies, said the co-author of "Synthesis and
Evaluation of Nicotine α4β2 Receptor Radioligand,
5-(3'-18F-Fluoropropyl)-3-(2-(S)- Pyrrolidinylmethoxy) Pyridine, in
Rodents and PET in Nonhuman Primate."
The team plans to obtain complete toxicity and
dosimetry data in order to obtain approval for conducting human studies.
The study was written by Sankha Chattopadhyay,
Ph.D., Baogang Xue, M.D., Daphne Collins, B.E., and Rama Pichika, Ph.D.,
all at the department of psychiatry and human behavior, Brain Imaging
Center, University of California, Irvine, Calif.; Rudy Bagnera, B.S.,
and Frances M. Leslie, Ph.D., both at the department of pharmacology,
University of California, Irvine, Calif.; Bradley T. Christian, Ph.D.,
Bingzhi Shi, Ph.D., and Tanjore K. Narayanan, Ph.D., all at the
department of PET/nuclear medicine, Kettering Medical Center, Dayton,
Ohio; and Steven G. Potkin, M.D., and Jogeshwar Mukherjee, Ph.D., both
at the department of psychiatry and human behavior, Brain Imaging
Center, University of California, Irvine, Calif.
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