DGE MRI detects altered glucose uptake and utilization upon microglia activation in Alzheimer’s disease

Immune cell activation is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Microglia activation impairs with glucose metabolism, which may serve as early biomarker for AD. Here, we employed dynamic glucose-enhanced (DGE)-MRI to assess glucose uptake and clearance in AD, and study its relationship with microglia based on our previous study. We observed an increase in microglia in AD than WT, accompanied with relatively high parenchymal glucose uptake and low CSF clearance. We believe further studies to associate the underlying molecular and cellular pathology of AD with DGE-MRI could benefit the identification of AD in early stages.