Brain scans identify early signs of Alzheimer’s

Dr. Jonathan Schott of University College London's Dementia Research Centre stated, “There is increasing evidence that Alzheimer disease is associated with changes in the brain that start many years before symptoms develop.

“If we could identify people in whom the disease process has started but symptoms have not yet developed, we would have a potential window of opportunity for new treatments—as and when they become available—to prevent or delay the start of memory loss and cognitive decline.”

Neurologists scan brains of 311 healthy adults
In order to identify the risk of Alzheimer’s in healthy individuals neurologists carried out a study.

They evaluated 311 seniors between the ages of 70 and 80 who were part of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. None of the study subjects exhibited any signs of cognitive impairment.

For the purpose of the study, the participants underwent PET scans to assess the levels of amyloid-beta peptides which are responsible for the plaques leading to Alzheimer’s disease.

The neurologists studied the brain metabolites characteristic of the disease by implementing brain imaging techniques with advanced features, known as proton MR.

In addition, all the volunteers were tested on memory, language and cognitive skills.

Findings of the study
The analysis revealed that 33 percent of the participants had significantly high levels of amyloid-beta plaques.

These people also had levels of brain metabolites. It was further noted that those who had high ratios of certain metabolites, choline/creatine, scored poorly in mental ability tests irrespective of their level of plaques.

Lead researcher Dr. Kejal Kantarci, a radiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. stated, “This relationship between amyloid-beta deposits and these metabolic changes in the brain are evidence that some of these people may be in the earliest stages of the disease.

“More research is needed that follows people over a period of years to determine which of these individuals will actually develop the disease and what the relationship is between the amyloid deposits and the metabolites.”

The new study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and its findings published in journal Neurology.