Heterogeneity of Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) as Characterized by Brain Perfusion Techniques. Towards New Ways of Syndrome Characterization

Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) syndrome is an autoimmune condition that affects the way that blood cells in humans bind together. Though the cause of APS is unclear, researchers believe that many factors have an impact on developing this pathological condition. Phospholipids (PLs) play numerous central roles in biological systems, and processes of biological systems regulation act through the liberation of a vast amount of different signalling molecules, which are also involved in the modulation of cell proliferation, inflammation, oxidative stress, neurotransmission and many other processes.A global landmark, holistic, is required to evaluate different phenotypes in APS. All thecriteria validated for the APS diagnosislead to an extremely heterogeneous landmark of the pathology and related to several manifestations in different systems. Heterogeneity also characterizes the SPECT acquisition of the patients and it is connected to several neurological and underestimates symptoms of the pathology. We present some examples to highlight the connection between heterogeneity in SPECT and APS markers of pathology indicating the needs to approach to the Syndrome in a holistic way. At the end of the paper we suggested the multidisciplinary approach that we are tuning for our analysis, approach based on Imaging, Metabolomic and Clinical evaluation, including mental health test for a neuropsychiatric characterization of the pathology.