Times Chronicle
Glenside News
By: Linda Finarelli
Advanced medical research that may lead to breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease is being carried out by a husband-and-wife team in Jenkintown.
By using "tracer" chemicals that bond to markers for specific diseases and high-tech scanners that produce 3-D images, the Adler Institute for Advanced Imaging is able to more accurately pinpoint cancerous tumors in patients. That same technology may someday be able to illuminate the plaque in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease and determine the impact of a drug to arrest the disease, according to Dr. Lee Adler, the medical director and founder of the advanced imaging institute.
Alzheimer's, a progressive and eventually fatal brain disease, is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, where approximately 5.2 million people now suffer from it, according to the Alzheimer's Association Web site www.alz.org. An estimated 10 million baby boomers are expected to develop Alzheimer's in their lifetime, amounting to 7.7 million Americans with the disease by 2030 and 11 million to 15 million by 2050.
The Adler Institute has the only fixed PET/CT (positron emissions tomography and computed tomography) scanner in Eastern Montgomery County, said Adler, a pioneer in PET, PET/CT and 3-D coronary artery imaging and former chief of nuclear medicine at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Comparing the technology to a satellite view of weather patterns imposed on a map of the United States to show where storms will occur, Adler said the CT image - a precise display of the body's anatomy - is combined with the PET image that shows abnormal activity to allow doctors to see exactly where, for example, a tumor is located in the body.
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