New technology to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms appear

Using MR and PET, and other techniques to understand how the most common cause of dementia in humans – late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) – progressed in patients, researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and Hospital found that decreased blood flow through the brain is the earliest physiological clue that a patient has the disease.

“This study provides a new therapeutic angle into Alzheimer’s disease and we now think that some of the compounds that are used for obesity and diabetic deregulation might potentially be beneficial for Alzheimer’s patients as well”, said lead researcher Bettina Platt, Professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. This study looked at 1,200 children to test the effects of the gene in early life.

People with the APOE4 gene have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s in old age. Since everyone inherits one version of the gene from each parent, there are six possible combinations.

Further research will also need to be done to confirm the link. Evidence of amyloid plaque build-up in the brain, which scientists have tied to progressive decline of memory and cognitive skills typical of the disease, appears to be detectable using a specialized device.

Ian Le Guillou, research officer at Alzheimer’s Society said: “These interesting findings suggest that people with the APOEe4 gene – which increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease – have differences in their brains from childhood”. “We wanted to analyze not only a specific set of regions or measures (defined by ADNI experts), but all the information that could be associated with changes in the brain gray matter”, he said. Both of these conditions “mirror” the brains of elderly people with the same genetic variants, the researchers wrote.

The brain scans showed that some children with two copies of epsilon 4, or one copy of epsilon 4 paired with one copy of epsilon 2, had lower scores in tests of memory and thinking. The study found that “children with any form of the ε4 gene had differences in their brain development compared to children with ε2 and ε3 forms of the gene”, and that these differences were seen in areas of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s.

Findings suggest that an earlier hormone replacement treatment could be an effective preventive intervention among newly menopausal women.

The results “support the provocative idea that AD (Alzheimer’s disease) is, in part, a developmental disorder”, wrote brain researchers Rebecca Knickmeyer of UNC Chapel Hill and Dr. M. Elizabeth Ross of Weill Cornell Medical College.

The ABC reports a vaccine to prevent and even reverse the early stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia could be tested on humans within the next two to three years after the US Government green-lit funding.