Imagine you have a table filled with puzzle pieces: the amyloid burden and glucose metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease. Now, you want to understand how these pieces are distributed and organized. That’s exactly what the researchers did! They studied PET data from AD patients and cognitively normal individuals to reveal spatial patterns and clustering organization of amyloid and glucose metabolism. They discovered that brain regions with high amyloid load also had high glucose metabolism, as if these pieces were closely connected in the puzzle. Additionally, they found that certain areas, like the frontal and temporal regions, showed greater changes in amyloid deposition, while others like the parietal and temporal areas exhibited more severe hypometabolism. By applying a hierarchical clustering approach, the researchers grouped brain regions into clusters based on amyloid and metabolism, showing that nearby regions tend to form sub-networks together. Interestingly, they observed a positive correlation within amyloid-amyloid networks as well as metabolism-metabolism networks, but a negative correlation between amyloid and metabolism. This suggests that the impact of AD on different pathological markers might not occur simultaneously but is definitely intertwined in complex ways. Want to dive deeper into this fascinating research? Check out the link below!

Increased amyloid burden and decreased glucose metabolism are important characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but their spatial distribution and hierarchical clustering organization are still poorly understood. In this study, we explored the distribution and clustering organization of amyloid and glucose metabolism based on 18F-florbetapir and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET data from 68 AD patients and 20 cognitively normal individuals. We found that: (i) cortical regions with highest florbetapir binding were the regions with high glucose metabolism; (ii) the percentage changes of amyloid deposition were greatest in the frontal and temporal areas, and the hypometabolism was greatest in the parietal and temporal areas; (iii) brain areas can be divided into three hierarchical clusters by amyloid and into five clusters by metabolism using a hierarchical clustering approach, indicating that adjacent regions are more likely to be grouped into one sub-network; and (iv) there was a significant positive correlation in any pair of amyloid-amyloid and metabolism-metabolism sub-networks, and a significant negative correlation in amyloid-metabolism sub-networks. This may suggest that the influence forms and brain regions of AD on different pathological markers may not be synchronous, but they are closely related.

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