William Atkins
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 19:32
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 2
A Swedish led team of scientists has developed a test that involves the compound amyloid-beta and two tau proteins within the spinal fluid to help determine if normal memory losses in the elderly is really Alzheimer’s disease.
The results of their study (JAMA. 2009;302(4):385-393) is published in the July 22, 2009 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) under the title “
CSF Biomarkers and Incipient Alzheimer Disease in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment.”
The international team is lead by Niklas Mattsson, who is associated with Gothenburg University-affiliated hospital in Mölndal, Sweden.
The team tested 750 elderly people, with an average age of 69 years, from 12 centers in the United States and Europe, between the years 1990 and 2007.
All of the 750 volunteers had mild cognitive impairment (MCI)--that is, memory loss or other mental deficiencies--that was not due totally to aging.
Of that number, 529 had Alzheimer's disease (AD), while 304 did not (and, thus, constituted the control group with only the presence of MCI).
The researchers took samples of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), or spinal fluid, from each subject over at least a two-year period or until symptoms progressed to indicate clinical dementia..
The scientists wanted to look at the biomarkers within the CSF in order to see if they could identify the presence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in patients with MCI.
Page two continues with the results of the AD study.
