Tau Imaging in Head Injury

Cyrus Ayubcha; Mateen Moghbel; Austin J Borja; Andrew Newberg; Thomas J Werner; Abass Alavi; Mona-Elisabeth Revheim

doi:10.1016/j.cpet.2020.12.009

Tau Imaging in Head Injury

PET Clin. 2021 Apr;16(2):249-260. doi: 10.1016/j.cpet.2020.12.009.

Authors

Cyrus Ayubcha¹, Mateen Moghbel², Austin J Borja³, Andrew Newberg⁴, Thomas J Werner⁵, Abass Alavi⁵, Mona-Elisabeth Revheim⁶

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
² Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Department of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
⁴ Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Department of Radiology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁵ Department of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
⁶ Division of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Sognsvannsveien 20, Oslo 0372, Norway; Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Problemveien 7, Oslo 0315, Norway. Electronic address: monar@ous-hf.no.

PMID: 33648666
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpet.2020.12.009

Abstract

Tau proteins play a significant role in a variety of degenerative neurologic conditions. Postmortem neuropathology studies of victims of repeat and severe head trauma have defined a unique spatial expression of neurologic tauopathies in these individuals, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Established and newly developed radiotracers are now being applied to head injury populations with the intent of diagnosis and disease monitoring. This review assesses the role of tau in head injury, the state of tau radiotracer development, and the potential clinical value of tau-PET as derived from head injury studies.

Keywords: CTE; Chronic traumatic encephalopathy; Imaging; Neurodegeneration; PET; Tau.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy*
Diagnostic Imaging
Humans
Tauopathies* / diagnostic imaging
tau Proteins

Substances

tau Proteins