FLUORO-DEOXYGLUCOSE POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY IN DIFFUSE LEWY BODYDISEASE

We report six demented individuals with pathologically verified diffus e Lewy body disease (DLBD) studied with fluoro-deoxyglucose positron e mission tomography (FDG-PET). Three subjects had pure DLBD and three s ubjects had combined DLBD and Alzheimer's disease (DLBD-AD) pathology. FDG-PET revealed evidence of diffuse cerebral hypometabolism in both pure DLBD and DLBD-AD with marked declines in association cortices wit h relative sparing of subcortical structures and primary somatomotor c ortex, a pattern reported previously in AD. Unlike AD, however, these subjects also had hypometabolism in the occipital association cortex a nd primary visual cortex. These findings indicate the presence of diff use cortical abnormalities in DLBD and suggest that FDG-PET may be use ful in discriminating DLBD from AD antemortem.