It is possible to spot signs of dementia-related illnesses in patients nine years before they are diagnosed, according to a new study.
- Dementia-related illnesses are very common with age. For example, Alzheimer’s disease affects approximately 1 million people in France.
- The earlier the diagnosis, the better the treatment. The findings of this study would allow patients to be diagnosed earlier.
In new study published in the journal Alzheimers & Dementia, a team of researchers analyzed data from the UK Biobank (a British medical database). Their findings show that certain impairments in areas, such as problem solving, reaction times and number recall, are more common in people who develop dementia-related illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
These results raise the possibility that in the future, at-risk patients may be identified for clinical trials or new treatments even before they start showing symptoms.
Dementia: once the diagnosis is made, it is often already too late to act
One of the reasons why there are so few effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease is that these conditions are not identified until symptoms appear, but neurodegeneration can have started years or decades ago. Once the diagnosis is made, it is often already too late to be able to really act on the evolution of the disease.
The UK Biobank is a biomedical database containing vast amounts of anonymised information on the genetics, lifestyle and health of half a million Britons aged 40-69. As well as information on patients’ health and disease diagnoses, the UK Biobank collected data from a range of tests including problem solving, memory, reaction times and number of falls. This allowed the researchers to see if any signs were present long before the diagnosis, meaning between five and nine years before, when the measurements were first collected.
People who later developed Alzheimer’s disease at the time performed worse than healthy people on problem-solving tasks, reaction times, memorizing lists of digits, prospective memory (the ability to remember to do something later), and pair matching. This was also the case for people who developed a rarer form of dementia known as “frontotemporal dementia”.
Cognitive decline can be seen many years before the obvious symptoms
Additionally, people who developed Alzheimer’s disease were more likely than healthy adults to have fallen in the previous 12 months. Patients who developed a rare neurological condition called ‘progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)’, which affects balance, were more than twice as likely as healthy people to have fallen. Additionally, for every condition studied – including Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies – patients reported poorer overall health.
“When we reviewed the patient histories, it became clear that they had cognitive impairment several years before their symptoms became evident enough to trigger a diagnosis”explains Nol Swaddiwudhipong, doctor at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study, in a communicated.
New treatment: a promising study to improve clinical trials
The researchers point out that these results could also help identify people who could participate in clinical trials to test potential new treatments. Indeed, clinical trials often recruit patients who already have a diagnosis of dementia. However, at this stage, it is difficult to influence the evolution of the disease. Finding patients who are developing dementia before diagnosis would give a better chance of knowing if the drugs are working.
“It’s one more step to screen those most at risk – for example, people over 50 or those who have high blood pressure or don’t exercise enough – and intervene at a later stage. early to help them reduce their risk”adds Nol Swaddiwudhipong.