Inside the doctor's bag: Predicting Alzheimer's
You're feeling fine, you're acting normal, yet inside your brain something bad is happening. Something that will take years to show itself and begin to rob you of memories. Scientists have now found a method that may give people advance warning of Alzheimer's disease, decades before this thief of minds reveals itself for all to see.
This week, at the Alzheimer's Prevention Conference in Washington, D.C., brain researcher Lisa Mosconi reported that a type of brain scan called PET was able to pick out people who would go on to develop Alzheimer's from a then-normal group ranging in age from 50 to 84. "It was accurate in 85 percent of the cases," says Mosconi, who works at New York University's School of Medicine. The PET scan, or positron emission tomography, measures energy use in the brain. Mosconi and her colleagues focused it on the hippocampus, a region of the brain crucial to forming memories. Those who would go on to develop Alzheimer's–some of them two decades after they were tested–had a 15-to-40 percent reduction in energy use in this region.
This test is not about to appear in your doctor's office. Mosconi's study needs to be repeated to show that the effects are real. Right now it's best thought of as a research tool. But if it does pan out, it introduces an uncomfortable question: Do you want to know, years ahead of time, that you have an incurable disease? There is no cure for Alzheimer's, and current treatments can only slow the disease down for six months to a year. Other research presented at the conference indicated that yes, people do want to know. On being diagnosed with early Alzheimer's, people are distressed, shocked, and try to hide it, reported Renee Beard, a medical sociologist from the University of California-San Francisco. But they also say they are grateful. They are glad to have the chance to plan, to arrange for care, to make sure they have the money to pay for that care, and to spend time with loved ones while they are still able to enjoy the company. It is particularly important for doctors to note these differing reactions and help patients through this challenging time.