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New Tool Helps Doctors Identify Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s

Posted on: Thursday, 14 May 2009, 11:10 CDT

Scientists have developed a new risk index that will increase their ability to predict the likelihood of dementia in patients over the age of 65.
Reporting in the journal Neurology, researchers describe the 15-point checklist as a series of tests based on different characteristics that can predict a patient’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The checklist successfully predicted about half of the cases of dementia in a group of elderly people over a six-year period, scientists said.
"This new risk index could be very important both for research and for people at risk of developing dementia and their families," Researcher Deborah Barnes of the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement.

She said the new tool could be crucial for doctors who struggle with an inability to predict the development of Alzheimer’s in patients . It could also help companies design new drugs to be used during the early-stages of the disease.

The tests gauge a wide variety of well-known risk factors, such as low scores on tests of thinking skills, presence of the ApoE4 gene, and some lesser-known risk factors, such as being underweight or having a history of heart bypass surgery.

The tool is the result of a study that consisted of 3,375 people with an average age of 76 and no evidence of dementia. Researchers found that 480 members of the group developed dementia over a period of six years.

Scientists were able to use the index to correctly identify 88 percent of participants.

'This new risk index is a very useful tool that could help boost dementia research into treatments and prevention,” said Dr. Susanne Sorensen, Head of Research at the Alzheimer’s Society.  “However, it is very unlikely to be routinely available to older people in the UK because some of the tests are very expensive to carry out.”

“One million people will develop dementia in the next ten years. Scientists investigating ways to prevent this devastating condition could use this tool to select people who are at a high risk. This would produce stronger results, reduce the number of participants needed in clinical trials and reduce the cost of research,” Sorensen said in a statement.

Alzheimer’s is estimated to affect about 5.3 million Americans and 26 million people worldwide. The disease is hard to predict, and it slowly progresses from mild memo



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journal Neurology

University of California

Source: redOrbit staff

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