Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The art of loss!

I put the title – ‘The art of loss’ to evaluate pathogenesis and investigation of central nervous system diseases. Recently one international symposium organized by Tohoku University (my host university) of Japan elucidated the imaging diagnostic procedure of central nervous system disease (neurodegeneration) with the title mentioned above. It is acknowledged that nerve cell (neuron) degeneration of central nervous system (brain) is started usually from the middle age (at the age 50 y). Dementia (memory loss) is the devastating symptom of neurodegenration. There are some investigation procedures when symptoms are pronounced – CSF assessment (spinal fluid) and imaging (MRI scan) are useful for this evaluation. Recently PET imaging (positron emission tomography) – a nuclear medicine technique has been applied to evaluate nerve cell degeneration (neurodegeneration). Thanks to this nuclear medicine imaging method. In future, this method (PET scan) might have clinical application in evaluating in dementia like (memory loss) diseases.