Breakthroughs in preventing and detecting Alzheimer’s disease can’t come soon enough for the 5.3 million Americans who have the mind-wasting disease. But hopeful advances are being made in both areas.
New tests are being developed that detect the disease earlier than ever before — and scientists believe that the earlier treatment can begin, the fewer brain cells will be lost.
And in the area of prevention, the newest studies show that specific nutrients and even common medications prevent or retard the increase in toxic proteins associated with the disease. Here are the latest breakthroughs in detection and prevention.
1. Blood test
A simple blood test is being developed that uses information about more than 100 proteins combined with other information, such as whether or not patients carry a key gene called APOE4 known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.
"Our overall success rate of detecting those with Alzheimer's disease is 94 percent,” Sid O’Bryant of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, told Reuters. “Our overall correctness of classifying those without Alzheimer's disease is 84 percent.”
2. Spinal fluid test
Specific proteins in spinal fluid — beta amyloid and tau — can diagnose Alzheimer’s and also help predict which patients, who appear healthy but have memory problems, will eventually develop Alzheimer’s, a study published in the Archives of Neurology found. The spinal fluid test was 90 percent accurate in detecting patients with Alzheimer’s.
"The unexpected presence of the Alzheimer's disease signature in more than one-third of cognitively normal subjects suggests that Alzheimer's disease pathology is active and detectable earlier than has heretofore been envisioned," Geert De Meyer of Ghent University in Belgium and colleagues wrote in a statement.
3. Eye test
British researchers have developed a simple eye test that could spot Alzheimer's years before symptoms appear. The test uses eye drops containing a fluorescent dye followed by a photo taken with an infra-red camera. Dying nerve cells in the retina absorb the dye and show up as green dots. The test, which could be given by an optician, would allow treatment to begin immediately, giving hope of stopping and even reversing the dreaded disease.
"Few people realize that the retina is a direct, albeit thin, extension of the brain," lead author Professor Francesca Cordeiro of the University College London, said in a statement. "It's entirely possible that in the future, a visit to an optician to check on your eyesight will also be a check on the state of your brain," she said.
4. Imaging scans
Specific imaging tests predict which patients with cognitive impairment will develop Alzheimer’s. People were given MRI scans to measure the volume of the brain’s hippocampus — the area of the brain where learning and memory originate — and the tau and beta amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer’s. They were also given PET scans to measure how well the brain used sugar.
"People who had poorer scores on both of those tests were almost 12 times more likely to convert to Alzheimer's disease than people who were normal on those two," Susan Landau of the University of California, Berkeley, told Reuters.
5. Blood pressure drugs
A study of more than 819,000 veterans with heart disease at Boston University School of Medicine found that patients taking blood pressure drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) significantly lowered their risk of developing Alzheimer’s or dementia when compared to patients taking an ACE inhibitor called lisinopril or other heart medications. ARB drugs include Diovan (valsartan) and Atacand (candesartan).
Men who took an ARB reduced their risk of dementia by 24 percent, and ACE inhibitors lowered the risk by 19 percent. The researchers found that when ARBs were combined with angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, the risk of dementia was reduced by almost half, and patients who already had dementia or Alzheimer’s were two-thirds less likely to be admitted to nursing facilities.
6. Vitamin E
Italian and Swedish researchers found that high levels of several components of vitamin E helped prevent cognitive deterioration in people 80 years of age and older. They found that seniors with the higher blood levels of all the forms of vitamin E reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer's by 45 percent to 54 percent, depending on the levels of specific components.
7. Moderate drinking
A new Spanish study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease suggests alcohol consumption reduces risk. Researchers at the University of Valencia interviewed 246 healthy people and the relatives of 176 Alzheimer's patients of the same age and gender mix about their health and lifestyle factors. They discovered that light to moderate drinking had a protective effect against Alzheimer's disease, especially among women who were nonsmokers.
8. Olive oil
A study by researchers at Northwestern University and the Monell Chemical Senses Center found that oleocanthal, a compound that occurs naturally in extra-virgin olive oil, inhibits the ability of the toxic proteins that contribute to Alzheimer’s (called ADDLs) to damage nerves in the brain.
“Binding of ADDLs to nerve synapses is thought to be a crucial first step in Alzheimer’s disease,” study co-leader William L. Klein, professor of neurobiology and physiology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement. “Oleocanthal alters ADDL structure in a way that deters the protein from binding to synapses.
9. Painkillers
“Nine out of 10 studies show that low doses of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications (200 to 400 mg of ibuprofen) taken for two or more years in people under 80 years old reduced the chance of developing Alzheimer's by 50 percent,” says Dr. Daniel Amen, contributor to the Mind Health Report. “Other studies found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk by 33 to 50 percent.”
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