Certain proteins measured in spinal fluid can help to diagnose Alzheimer’s accurately and predict which patients suffering memory problems will go onto develop the fatal disease, according to researchers in Belgium.
The team based at the Archives of Neurology also said it may also be possible to help identify the early signs of the disease in healthy people.
“The unexpected presence of the Alzheimer’s disease signature in more than one-third of cognitively normal subjects”, wrote Geert De Meyer of Ghent University in Belgium, “suggests that Alzheimer’s disease pathology is active and detectable earlier than has heretofore been envisioned” .
The research accurately detected Alzheimer’s in 90 percent of patients with the disease by measuring traces of beta amyloid and tau, two proteins associated with the telltale plaques and tangles that develop in the brains of patients suffering Alzheimer’s.
They could also detect 100 percent of people with memory impairments who go onto to develop Alzheimer’s disease within five years and detected Alzheimer’s proteins in 36 percent of people with normal brain functionality.
At this moment, only an autopsy can confirm a person has Alzheimer’s which is fatal and incurable deterioration of the brain. More than 26 million people around the world currently have the disease.
Doctors are able to diagnose Alzheimer’s by ruling out other causes of memory loss, such as a stroke, tumors and heavy consumption of alcohol.
During the investigation, they discovered 90 percent of those with Alzheimer’s had the disease pattern in their spinal fluid. This pattern was also there in 72 percent of those with mild impairment and 36 percent of those who were normal.
