Tears hold clue to Alzheimer’s test and the potential for earliest treatment

I think we all worry about whether we’ll end up with Alzheimer’s. While genetic testing can gauge your risk, as the Alzheimer’s Association says, “Risk genes increase the likelihood of developing a disease but do not guarantee it will happen.” So, basically it still leaves you waiting and wondering. Now in a perfect world, you might choose to take everything that’s known to lessen the odds for Alzheimer’s and get to work easing your concerns. But, truth be told, like most of us, you may take the gamble and put off healthy lifestyle changes until a diagnosis is staring you in the face. But what if a simple test could reveal if Alzheimer’s earliest indicators, amyloid beta and tau plaque, were already invading your brain? A new study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reveals researchers are on the heels of such a test — right now… Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s show up in unexpected place Researchers at Boston Medical Center knew that diagnosing and starting treatment for Alzheimer’s before symptoms began was key to managing the disease. That’s because by the time symptoms appear, it’s usually too late for current treatments to have any meaningful effect. So, they knew they needed to find a way to test for the amyloid-beta and tau plaque deposits that appear on the brain years before the earliest symptoms. Unfortunately, the diagnostic capability of brain scan technology, with the exception of a very few locations across the county, does not clearly pick up the plaque deposits on the brain. There was previous research that had shown low levels of the plaque proteins could be identified in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) taken during lumbar puncture (spinal tap) tests. But this kind of testing is not only expensive, it’s painful and can result in CSF leaks […]

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