Positron emission tomography in the early diagnosis of Huntington's disease.

We studied 10 patients with early Huntington's disease and 7 normal age-matched controls with positron emission tomography (PET) using fluorodeoxyglucose. Subjects had little or no caudate nucleus atrophy and had not received any medications. The results demonstrated that hypometabolism of glucose preceded tissue loss. Furthermore, patients with minimal neurologic or psychiatric symptoms and no obvious CT changes may be differentiated from normal persons with high accuracy by PET. PET is helpful in the early diagnosis of Huntington's disease irrespective of the mode of presentation. PET may also be useful for preclinical detection and may supplement information from DNA studies.