Healthy Living

The Groundbreaking Tests for Alzheimer's Currently Being Researched

The Groundbreaking Tests for Alzheimer's Currently Being Researched

The evolution of medical treatments for long-existent diseases and conditions is a constant drive for bettering the future for patients.  Researchers around the world are constantly joining this effort by attempting to make sense of the very diseases that make significant impacts on the community as a whole.  This is done through a variety of clinical studies, joint effort studies, and so on.  One disease that has been the focus of such research includes Alzheimer’s disease. 

Following its discovery in 1906, researchers and medical professionals alike have been trying to understand how it is that the condition develops in patients.  At this time, new tests have been proposed in identifying the early stages of Alzheimer’s.  Scientists hope that with these new tests that are currently developing, they may be able to utilize various medications, changes to lifestyles, as well as other forms of treatment, in order to combat the disease before it causes permanent damage to a patient's brain. 

The Alzheimer’s Association states that over 5 million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, with that total expected to surpass 16 million by the year 2050.  This being said, the effort to find a cure for Alzheimer’s has been more present than ever in the medical world, and may very well be on its way towards a significant leap in progress within these next few years.

Recent research surrounding Alzheimer’s disease has begun to focus on the early warning signs that are often associated with the condition.  Of the proposed tests for identifying these early signs, scientists have searched for key insights in a patient’s eyes, speech, as well as the way in which a patient smells.  These types of tests are a few of the new methods now being tried in order to detect Alzheimer’s disease as early as possible. 

Of the efforts, one healthcare center has created one of the first eye tests for Alzheimer’s. Doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, located in Los Angeles, California, have created this test, wherein light is used to look into the eye of the patient, which may be key to discovering the disease well before it develops.  The research suggests that this method could be capable of detecting this harsh disease 15 to 20 years before doctors have been traditionally able to diagnose it. 

When asked about the test, Keith L Black, MD, and chairman of the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurosurgery, explained that, “The back of the eye, the retina, is an extension of the brain. The key observation from our group was that the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease -- amyloid plaque -- is one of the first signs that develops in Alzheimer’s, and it not only occurs in the brain, but also in the retina.”

The test mentioned above is said to take only 20 minutes, and implement non-invasive techniques in order to accurately determine whether or not a patient had Alzheimer’s disease.  Alongside this new test, the same research efforts have looked towards the development of certain plaques in patients.