How to Detect Alzheimers Early

Despite the advances that have been made in Alzheimer's disease research, there is still only one definitive way to diagnose your loved one with this mind-crippling illness -- and that is with an autopsy. That may sound grim, because the sooner your family member or friend is diagnosed, the more effective his course of treatment will be. There are, however, a number of new methods designed to detect Alzheimer's. Though not 100 percent accurate, they have a strong track record of accurately predicting AD.

Instructions

How to Detect Alzheimer's Early

• 1

  Note changes in your loved one. The Alzheimer's Association has identified 10 warning signs, that can be found at alz.org, including mood swings, withdrawal from the things your loved one once loved and rash decision-making. Typically, the distinction between AD and what's a "normal" change in behavior is in the duration and degree of the symptoms -- if your loved one's cognitive problems are disrupting his life and gradually getting worse, it's time to see a doctor.

• 2

  Rule out other causes. When you take your loved one to the doctor, the first thing they'll try to do is rule out other causes for this troubling behavior -- and there are a gamut of symptoms that seem Alzheimer's-like, including emotional problems like depression. The way they'll do that is through reviewing your family's history, a blood and urine test and clinical exam, and an assessment that will put your loved one's cognition to the test through exercises such as being asked to recall famous people or naming common objects.

• 3

  Try word recall. The National Institute on Aging introduced this test decades ago, and it's still considered an accurate predictor today. These tests typically consist of 10 words. Your loved one will be told to remember one word at a time, and will then be intentionally be distracted with another task. They'll then be asked to later recall that word. According to Harvard Mental Health Letter, more than 80 percent of those patients with delayed recall above a certain level developed AD within a decade.

• 4

  Ask about a spinal fluid evaluation. Great strides have been made in detecting what's called bio-markers, such as the presence of proteins believed to contribute to the formation of AD, in the blood and spinal fluid. In fact, one study found that measuring the levels of these abnormal proteins in the spinal fluid was nearly 90 percent accurate in identifying those patients who were eventually diagnosed with AD. You may think that these proteins would be present at high levels, but in the case of AD the red flag is proteins present in low levels in the spinal fluid, because it's believed these proteins actually gather in abnormal structures called plaques in the brain.

• 5

  Get a brain scan. Another promising area in early detection is the use of an MRI to point to irregularities in the brain linked to AD. At one time MRIs were just used to detect abnormalities like tumors, but for AD, MRIs can be used to scan the brain and identify whether the tissue is contracting. It's believed that the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with long-term memory, is one of the first areas to be impacted by AD -- and it's believed that area actually shrinks in AD brains. Studies have found that brains with Alzheimer's are a third smaller than healthy ones.