9 Early Signs of Alzheimer’s Every Adult Should Know

Why early detection matters

 

With grim prognoses and very limited treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, early detection isn’t particularly advantageous. (These 36 habits reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s.) But that may be changing—fast. One of the hottest areas of Alzheimer’s research involves treating people in the very earliest stages of the disease with drugs that decrease the production of amyloid beta (proteins that bunch together to form damaging plaques in the brain). Experts believe that people begin to develop amyloid plaques in their brains at least 10 years before they develop any obvious symptoms of dementia. This is how memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients could soon be reversed.

Reisa Sperling, MD, director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is leading a new clinical trial, called the A4 study, which will evaluate patients with evidence of Alzheimer’s damage in the brain but who still have normal thinking and memory function. The trial will randomly assign groups to receive medication, and researchers will determine over three years whether the drugs affected the patients’ memory or levels of amyloid. “When a person already has a lot of memory trouble, they already have significant neuron loss,” says Dr. Sperling. “We need to find and treat people much earlier.” Here’s what to watch for.

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