Spinal Test May Predict Alzheimer’s Disease

A spinal fluid test may be 100 percent accurate in predicting Alzheimer’s disease

A spinal fluid test may be 100 percent accurate in identifying those with substantial memory loss that could develop later into a definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, a new research study shows.

The new study, which will be published Tuesday in the Archives of Neurology, shows how accurate previous tests already studied by other researchers in detecting the dreaded disease. The new findings are the latest of many that reveals a better understanding of Alzheimer’s.

Since its discovery, knowledge of the disease remained relatively stagnant for decades, with definitive diagnosis done only after autopsy, and hopes of a cure fading. But the field has recently been revived with these new research findings.

Medical researchers now know that the disease starts roughly ten years before the onset of symptoms, and the brain is irreversibly damaged when symptoms do appear.

The goal is to identify people who are developing Alzheimer’s at its early stage, monitor them under long-term studies to see how fast they develop symptoms, and devise new drugs and treatments in order to delay the progression if not cure the disease.

Besides the new spinal fluid test, new PET scans are used to show amyloid plaques in the brain that are identifying markers of the disease.

They are also continuously researching new drugs which will delay or stop brain cell death responsible for memory, reasoning, and functioning loss.

“This is what everyone is looking for, the bull’s-eye of perfect predictive accuracy,” Dr. Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia medical school, who is not connected to the new research, said about the spinal fluid study.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday August 10 2010, 11:04 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0