PET points to tau protein as leading culprit in Alzheimer's

(Society of Nuclear Medicine) Alzheimer's is a devastating and incurable disease marked by beta-amyloid and tau protein aggregations in the brain, yet the direct relationship between these proteins and neurodegeneration has remained a mystery. New molecular imaging research is revealing how tau, rather than amyloid-deposition, may be more directly instigating neuronal dysfunction, say presenters at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).