GE Healthcare is highlighting a trial that evaluated its DaTScan SPECT imaging agent to diagnose patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).
Results were presented this week at the World Congress of Neurology meeting in Vienna in two abstracts from a randomized, open-label, comparative clinical trial using DaTScan (ioflupane I-123 injection). The radiopharmaceutical is indicated for striatal dopamine transporter visualization using SPECT brain imaging.
The trial, which included 21 centers in six European contries, compared 114 patients with possible DLB who underwent DaTScan imaging with 56 control patients who did not receive DaTScan imaging.
The researchers found that more patients who underwent DaTScan SPECT had a change in diagnostic category after eight weeks (61%) and 24 weeks (71%) compared to the control group (4% and 16%, respectively). In addition, significantly more patients in the imaging group were given more confident diagnoses during follow-up. Clinicians also reported they were more likely to change the diagnostic category if the DaTScan image was abnormal (82%) than if the result was normal (48%).
Among subjects with possible DLB who were not imaged, the clinical evolution of symptoms over six months did not affect diagnosis. However, the result of a DaTScan image in combination with clinical features contributed significantly to a change in dementia diagnostic category, according to GE.
