Accurate Testing for Alzheimers Disease
Monday, August 23, 2010 at 9:24AM Reposted from CNN Health:
Over the years, there have been sophisticated tests such as PET and MRI scanning, which can help diagnose a patient, but are often better at excluding other causes of memory loss rather than confirming early AD. In short, there has been no great screening test for Alzheimer’s disease.
That may all start to change today, based on a new study from the Archives of Neurology. The authors have conducted a study showing a spinal-fluid test can be nearly 100 percent accurate in identifying patients who have mild memory loss now, and will go on to develop AD.
Think about that for a second. I have seen so many patients with mild memory loss who ask the question – is this the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease? The truth is, as a medical community – we were not sure. This test could provide that answer.
The study of patients in their seventies, included 114 patients with normal memory. 200 had mild cognitive impairment and 102 had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. All of them underwent a spinal tap to collect cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), a procedure that costs anywhere between $300 and $500. It involves putting a needle in the spinal sac in the lower back. Women who have had an epidural during labor have experienced a procedure similar to this.
Almost all the patients with AD were found to have a distinctive collection of protein in their CSF, a sort of AD signature. That is: The spinal tap was very good at confirming someone did in fact have the disease. But it was the group of people with mild cognitive impairment that provided the most striking findings. Nearly 75 percent of those patients in the study had the signature CSF findings, and every single one of those patients went on to develop AD within five years. Every single one of them.
In the third group, the patients with normal memory, around one third of those patients had the abnormal proteins, and the authors believe those people will develop AD memory problems one day as well.
AD, Alzheimers, Archives of Neurology, CSF, MRI, PET, Sanjay Gupta, memory loss, neurology in Medical Technology, Neurology | Email Article | Permalink | Print Article
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