Cardiac Sympathetic Neuroimaging in DLB

Researchers in neuroimaging and practitioners who manage patients with dementia may be surprised to learn that imaging of the heart can help distinguish Lewy body disorders from other causes of neurodegeneration. Over the past dozen years, a remarkably consistent neuroimaging literature has emerged indicating that cardiac noradrenergic denervation characterizes Parkinson disease (PD), pure autonomic failure, and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), in contrast with usually normal findings in multiple system atrophy, which can resemble PD clinically, and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia in the elderly. Post-mortem neuropathologic studies have generally confirmed these distinctions [1].