Health News - UCL research predicts onset of Alzheimer’s

Published: 6 January, 2011
by TOM FOOT

A TEAM of researchers at University College London believe they can predict the onset of dementia before symptoms of the debilitating brain condition begin to show

Tests on patients with low amounts of protein in their spinal fluid found their brains shrunk twice as fast as normal.

The same patients were also five times more likely to have the Alzheimer’s “risk gene”, APOE4.

UCL study lead author Dr Jonathan Schott, from the Dementia Research Centre in the UCL Institute of Neurology, said: “These findings may suggest that these individuals are at increased risk of developing dementia. If so, these results add to a growing body of work suggesting that Alzheimer’s disease starts many years before the onset of symptoms.”

Alzheimer’s is an incurable condition characterised by increasing memory loss and also flashes of anger – spotting the condition early could help families make care plans and quell anxiety.

Rebecca Wood, chief executive executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, the leading UK dementia research charity, added: “We are hamstrung by our inability to accurately detect Alzheimer’s, but these findings could prove to be pivotal. Spotting Alzheimer’s early is essential to the global research effort to beat the disease.”