Brain shrinks before finding Alzheimer's disease

Brain scans in healthy people show that the signs of brain shrinking in the affected areas of Alzheimer's disease have appeared nearly 10 years before the disease was diagnosed.

That is the discovery of American researchers published in the journal Neurology on 13/4.

The finding may open up a new way to detect early Alzheimer's disease, an improvement that may be helpful in developing effective therapies to treat diseases that affect 26 million people globally.

Brain model of Alzheimer's patients.(Source: Internet).

In a statement, one of the study authors, Leyla deToledo-Morrell of the Rush Medical University in Chicago said: ' Magnetic resonance measures can be very important in helping determine who is at risk. Alzheimer's dementia. If a therapy or treatment for a drug is developed in the future, people who are still asymptomatic but at high risk will benefit greatly. '

The study was conducted for two healthy groups of people in their 70s who swept the brain at the Medical Rush University in Chicago and the Massachusetts Public Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston; and they were followed for nine years.

During the study period, 50 of these subjects maintained normal awareness and 15 developed Alzheimer's disease.

At the end of the study period, people with the most atrophic regions of the cortex are three times more likely to develop this disease than others.

" We have also found that those who detect Alzheimer's disease in the brain through magnetic resonance imaging have the ability to develop dementia after 10 years," said study leader Dr Brad Dickerson of Massachusetts Public Hospital. three times higher than others who use higher measures '.

Now Eli Lilly, General Electric and other companies are developing special imaging tools that can detect proteins in the brain - signaling the emergence of Alzheimer's-related proteins. However, these tests are still being developed to eliminate Alzheimer's disease in patients who have symptoms of dementia.