Correlation between each task of the Mini‐Mental State Examination and regional glucose hypometabolism in at‐rest Alzheimer's disease patients

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between each task of the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) and regional glucose hypometabolism in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). We studied 38 patients with probable AD using 2‐18F‐fluoro‐2‐deoxy‐D‐glucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET). The images were corrected for differences in FDG uptake by cerebellar normalization, and were spatially normalized into a standard stereotactic anatomical space using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). There was a positive correlation between FDG uptake and the MMSE subscores for temporal orientation in the bilateral temporal and frontal cortex, and cingulate gyrus; for spatial orientation in the left parietal cortex, bilateral frontal and temporal cortex, and cingulate gyrus; for attention and calculation in the left temporal and frontal cortex; for writing in the left temporal cortex; and for copying and drawing, the correlation was positive in the bilateral parietal and occipital cortex. The total MMSE score was positively correlated with FDG uptake in the left temporal and frontal lobe. Our study demonstrated that, in AD patients, the distribution of hypometabolism in the resting state was related to clinical symptoms and that MMSE scores reflected brain dysfunction in the left hemisphere. Correlation analysis using SPM and FDG PET is useful for the objective evaluation of cognitive tests and diagnostic scoring.