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Testing for Alzheimer's

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Testing for Alzheimer's

As many of us get older, our memory starts to fail us. But is it normal forgetfulness, or an early sign of Alzheimer's? The answer is important. If it's Alzheimer's, doctors like to start treatment as early as possible. The trouble is, there's no test to tell whether a person definitely has Alzheimer's. But that may soon change thanks to work done in a lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Patients with Alzheimer's have something in their brains called cellular tangles, they occur early in the disease. This new test looks for these tangles not in the brain but in the spinal fluid.

"Obviously, we cant access the brain in most patients but we can access the spinal cord," says Dr. Peter Davies of The Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

This is a color-enhanced picture of a brain tangle. You won't find them anywhere else outside the brain. But in patients with Alzheimer's, small pieces of tangles can break off and end up in the spinal fluid. This new test is able to detect these fragments in the fluid and it seems to be accurate.

"It's very good. Eighty-five to ninety-five agreement with the clinical diagnoses," says Dr. Davies.

Dr. Davies says he hopes the test will be approved and available in the fall. He also says new treatments are on the horizon, making an early diagnosis that much more important.