Eur Radiol: What is the value of the APT sequence in evaluating ALS patients?

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a deadly disease that usually begins with muscle weakness and has an average life expectancy of three to five years.
current diagnosis of ALS relies heavily on the El Escorial standard, which requires lengthy investigations to rule out other conditions and neuromuscular disorders.
alS is difficult to diagnose early, in part because of the subjectivity of neurological assessments and the lack of objective indicators of brain injury.
is a compound containing nitrogen atoms that bind to niobium, widely found in a variety of proteins in the body.
can be a key indicator of a variety of neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and cerebral isoemia.
a new imaging technique called amide proton transfer (APT) to detect changes in the metabolism of endamide in the body due to micro-environmental changes.
recently, a study published in the Journal of European Radiology assessed changes in alamide concentration in ALS patients compared to healthy control groups using quantitative APT and multiparamer magnetic resonance imaging, and tested their relevance to clinical scores, providing a new reference for early diagnosis of ALS.
selected 16 ALS patients and 16 healthy control groups to perform multimode magnetic resonance imaging, including APT and diffusion imaging, on 3T-MR as part of the AlS Neuroimaging Alliance of Canada.
use Lorenz fitting to quantify theamide effect.
use the revised ALS Functional Score Scale (ALSFRS-R) to assess clinical disabilities and their relevance to image characteristics.
the diagnostic performance of different imaging parameters by analyzing the working characteristics of the receiver.
our results show significant differences in acetamide peaks between the motor cortical cortical layer and other gray areas of the brain in ALS patients (p .lt; 0.001).
compared to the control group, the acrylamide signal strength of the motor cortical cortical (p-lt; 0.001) and cortical spinal cord bundles (p-0.046) in ALS patients was significantly reduced, while no abnormalities were found in conventional imaging methods.
no significant correlation between paracetamol and ALSFRS-R scores.
accuracy of acetamide peaks is better than diffusion imaging.
showed no significant lesions in the regular T2 and T1 sequences of ALS patients, and even on FA and ADC images, alS and the health control group showed no difference.
, however, there were significant differences in the brain essence of ALS patients and between ALS patients and the health control group in APT images.
APT signal strength decreased significantly in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
study demonstrated changes in the signal strength of alamide in the motor cortical and cortical spinal cord bundles in ALS patients.