A new test could detect future Alzheimer's disease within 30 seconds.
Affecting more than five million Americans, Alzheimer’s disease is a tragic and all-too-common condition that strips away memory and dignity, bit by bit. Although there is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s, early treatment has been shown to slow the degenerative nature of the disease, and let patients live normal lives for a longer period of time.
But in most cases, people don’t realize that they have Alzheimer’s until it’s too late to do anything about it.
A new finding could change that: It’s long been known that Alzheimer’s patients have large lesions in their brains. But researchers recently found that people in their 40s occasionally have much smaller lesions, which are indicators of future Alzheimer’s.
Luckily, there’s no need to examine the brain up close to find out who is at risk: potential Alzheimer’s patients can be deduced with a simple 30-second screening test, which measures physical reactions and memory.
“The study lays open possibilities for screening, early detection and intervention,” said professor David Bunce of Brunel University in London. “The earlier we can intervene with people vulnerable to eventual dementia, the greater the chances of preventing or delaying the disease onset.”