At the beginning of neurodegenerative diseases, the immune cells of the brain – the “microglia” – take up glucose, a sugar molecule, to a much greater extent than hitherto assumed. Studies by researchers (with SyNergy members Peter Bartenstein, Robert Perneczky, Johannes Levin, Jochen Herms, and Christian Haass) from LMU, LMU Klinikum and DZNE (Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen) come to this conclusion. These results are of great significance for the interpretation of brain scans depicting the distribution of glucose in the brain. Furthermore, such image-based data could potentially serve as a biomarker to non-invasively capture the response of microglia to therapeutic interventions in people with dementia.