How autopsy teaches us and guides the search for a cure

In many cases, autopsy results help a patient’s family by confirming or refuting the clinical diagnosis. But autopsy also benefits the community through medical research. By observing the changes in a brain caused by disease, a pathologist can correlate tissue changes with clinical data, validate new clinical diagnostic technology, monitor the effectiveness of new drug therapies and suggest possible new types of treatments.

Participants in the Memory and Aging Center’s Autopsy Program have contributed to improving the diagnosis of dementia. For example, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy and frontotemporal dementia with motor neuron disease are separate disorders that share a wide variety of overlapping symptoms. A team lead by Dr. Bruce Miller was able to correlate unique initial symptoms with the pathologically confirmed diagnoses to improve early diagnosis, which is when treatments would be the most successful for the patient. This study was only possible because each clinical diagnosis had been confirmed through autopsy. Dr. Michael Rosenbloom presented the results at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. Read the abstract at www.abstracts2view.com/aan2009seattle/view.php?nu=AAN09L_P08.072.