Scientists See Early Signs of Alzheimer’s in Brain

WASHINGTON A subtle change in a memory-making brain region seems to predict who will get Alzheimer’s disease nine years before symptoms appear, scientists reported Sunday.

The finding is part of a wave of research aimed at early detection of the deadly dementia and one day perhaps even preventing it.

Researchers scanned the brains of middle-aged and older people while they were still healthy. They discovered that lower energy usage in a part of the brain called the hippocampus correctly signaled who would get Alzheimer’s or a related memory impairment 85 percent of the time.

“We found the earliest predictor,” said the lead researcher, Lisa Mosconi of New York University School of Medicine. “The hippocampus seems to be the very first region to be affected.”

But it is too soon to offer Alzheimer’s-predicting PET scans. The discovery must be confirmed.

Working toward prevention

Still, the discovery may provide leads to scientists searching for therapies to at least delay the onset of the degenerative brain disease. It already affects 4.5 million people in the U.S. and is predicted to strike 14 million by 2050 as the population ages.

Moreover, researchers are honing in on lifestyle choices that may help protect the brain in the first place.

Among the findings presented Sunday at the association’s first Alzheimer’s prevention conference:

* People who drink fruit or vegetable juice at least three times a week seem four times less likely to develop Alzhei-mer’s than nonjuice drinkers, according to a study of 1,800 elderly Japanese- Americans.

* Less education, gum disease early in life or a stroke were more important than genes in determining who got dementia, concluded a study of 100 dementia patients with healthy identical twins.

* Decreasing social activity in old age is a risk factor, a National Institute on Aging study suggests. It is not clear if the men in the study became less social because Alzheimer’s already was at work.

Finding it before it strikes

A big quest is to find ways to identify Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms emerge finding biomarkers that could be targets for preventive therapies.

PET scans already can show Alzheimer’s plaques in advanced disease. Mosconi’s study is the first to so rigorously examine people’s brains before symptoms appear.