Alzheimer’s test touted
Researcher Deborah Barnes of the University of California, San Francisco, thinks she has a tool for discovering who among the over-65 set is at risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease within the next six years. According to Reuters, Barnes claims her checklist has been 88% accurate to date in predicting who will subsequently develop the dreaded degenerative disease.
The checklist includes such little-known Alzheimer’s indicators as a history of heart bypass surgery, slowness in performing physical tasks such as buttoning one’s shirt, being underweight, or not drinking alcohol. Then there’s the usual laundry risk of well-known risk factors such as advanced age; carrying the apolipoprotein E (ApoE4) gene, which confers susceptibility; and scoring low on tests of thinking skills.
If an individual scores eight or higher on the 15-point checklist, she is considered at high risk to develop Alzheimer’s during the next six years. This serves as a warning to medical professionals that the patient warrants closer scrutiny.
Items on the checklist have been shown to have a high correlation with the future onset of Alzheimer’s. Consequently, their early detection can aid both in clinical treatment and in further research.
To develop the current predictive index, Barnes and her team studied 3,375 people (average age: 76) who showed no evidence of dementia. Over six years, 480 of the people developed dementia. By comparing those factors that best predicted the final outcome, the researchers were able to refine their list of correlations. When they then re-evaluated the original group using their checklist, they found that 56 percent of those with high scores had developed dementia within six years, compared to 23 percent with moderate scores and just four percent with low scores.
Of course, further studies are needed to confirm these results, the researcher was quick to point out. And the team, Barnes says, is always looking for simpler versions of the checklist that might be equally accurate.
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