Being able to “pre-diagnose” neurodegenerative diseases in patients at risk would offer new perspectives to researchers and open up new avenues for their therapeutic trials. It is therefore on this pre-diagnosis that researchers from the University of Cambridge (Great Britain) have focused. This allowed them to develop a logic and memory test that would detect dementia between 5 and 9 years before diagnosis.
“When we reviewed the history of patients with cognitive impairment, it became clear that they had these disorders for many years before their symptoms became sufficiently evident to trigger a diagnosis,” explained Dr. Nol Swaddiwudhipong, co-author of the study. “It’s important that we can screen those most at risk – for example, people over 50 or those who have high blood pressure or don’t exercise enough – in order to intervene at a later stage. early to help them reduce their risk,” he added. “But also to identify more people suitable for clinical trials for new dementia treatments.”
What are the signs identified by researchers?
The Cambridge researchers collected data from a range of tests including problem solving, memory, reaction times and grip strength. They also took into account the number of falls suffered. This allowed them to see if any signs were present initially, when the information was first collected between five and nine years before the diagnosis. They concluded that “people who developed Alzheimer’s disease performed worse than healthy people on problem solving, reaction times, memorizing lists of numbers, and memory”. They were also more likely than healthy adults to have fallen in the previous 12 months.
Source : Pre-diagnostic cognitive and functional impairment in multiple sporadic neurodegenerative diseasesAlzheimer’s and dementia, October 2022
