Charlton Heston Speaks Out
in Public Service Announcement
on behalf of the Academy of Molecular Imaging

Heston Advocates the Benefits of Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
for Early Alzheimer´s Detection

The public service announcement closely follows the release of new Alzheimer´s research conducted by AMI member Dr. Daniel Silverman, assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and associate director of imaging for the UCLA Alzheimer´s Disease Center. Dr. Silverman´s research indicates that PET scans can decrease the amount of false Alzheimer´s diagnoses by almost half.

Dr. Silverman´s research also concluded that the use of PET to assess whether patients had Alzheimer´s would correspond to a 62 percent decrease in avoidable months of nursing-home care and a 48 percent drop in unnecessary drug treatment.

"Even a six-month difference in the date of detection can profoundly affect the progression of Alzheimer´s," said Dr. Michael E. Phelps, who is the inventor of PET technology, president of the AMI, and Norton Simon professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "The AMI is sponsoring this public service announcement to increase consumer awareness, particularly for those who are concerned about their own health or the health of their loved ones."

At least 30 percent of people 85 and older suffer from Alzheimer´s disease, the most common form of dementia. The disease exacts an enormous financial burden on families and society. According to the National Institute for Aging, more than $90 billion will be spent annually on Alzheimer´s-related expenses in the United States.

In the public service announcement, Heston speaks on behalf of the AMI and cites the benefit of early diagnosis of Alzheimer´s, which can give patients extended quality time with loved ones. Research by AMI scientists has found that PET scans enable doctors to diagnose Alzheimer´s before the symptoms set in, which allows patients to take advantage of drugs that help delay progression of the disease.

PET, short for Positron Emission Tomography, is a medical diagnostic technology that produces images of the body´s biological functions. The ability to show biological functions differentiates PET from other types of body scans, such as CT or MR scans, which only show structural images.

With PET scan results, doctors can detect Alzheimer´s by analyzing the metabolic activity of a patient´s brain. The PET scans of patients who will develop Alzheimer´s show unique patterns of abnormal metabolic activity in the brain.