Alzheimer’s changes detectable in healthy elderly

A team of UCL researchers, part-funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust, has discovered that combining spinal fluid testing with MRI scans could provide an early indication of a person's risk of developing Alzheimer?s. The approach could allow scientists to test treatments or preventions far earlier in the disease, when experts believe they could be more effective. The findings of the study are published online this week in Annals of Neurology . The researchers studied 105 cognitively normal individuals from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). They split this group into those with high and low levels of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) amyloid, a protein which is typically reduced in the CSF of patients with Alzheimer's disease. MRI scan measurements over 12 months were used to calculate the brain shrinkage rate. The team also checked other characteristics such as the presence of known Alzheimer's risk gene APOE4.
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