Brain Shrinks a Decade Before Alzheimer’s Appears

[TECH NEWS]

Brain scans of healthy people showed signs that the brain was shrinking in Alzheimer’s-affected areas nearly a decade before the disease was diagnosed, U.S. researchers said April 13. The finding, published in the journal Neurology, may offer a new way to detect the disease early, an advance that could help in the development of effective treatments for Alzheimer’s, a brain-wasting disease that affects up to 26 million people globally. “The magnetic resonance measurements could be very important indicators to help identify who may be at risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia,” Leyla deToledo-Morrell of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who worked on the study, said in a statement. “If a drug therapy or treatment is developed in the future, those who are still without symptoms but at great risk would benefit the most from treatment.” The study involved two groups of healthy people in their 70s who had brain scans at Rush University in Chicago and at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston and were followed for an average of nine years. At the end of the study, people who had the highest amount of shrinkage in specific areas of the cerebral cortex were three times more likely to develop the disease.

4/13/2011, AuntMinnie.com/Reuters

Source: http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2011/04/13/WNL.0b013e3182166e96.abstract