Alzheimer's Disease can be predicted by Brain Plaque

The presence of beta-amyloid plaque in brains can help predict who will develop and who has Alzheimer's disease. According to data of about 9,500 people, amyloid can appear 20 to 30 years before signs of dementia ApoE4 gene, which increases the risk of the disease, speeds up amyloid buildup. With the help from amyloid screening, it can identify people for trials of prescriptions to prevent the disease. The results from these trials were insufficient because most brains were already damaged from dementia or they do not have the disease. According to Dr. Samuel Gandy, an Alzheimer's researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital, amyloid screening can be expensive and isn't covered by insurance, but most "can feel fairly confident that amyloid is due to Alzheimer's." He also said that if there were any medications that prevent the disease, they must be safe since the findings of amyloid could appear as early as 30 years old. The researchers examined many studies analyzing how dementia is linked to amyloid, resulting in the findings that, according to Dr. Ossenkoppele, the ApoE4 gene had a bigger effect than some people expected. "Even when people had one copy of a rarer ApoE2 gene that protects against Alzheimer's, they were still at high risk of having amyloid if they had the ApoE4 gene.

I found this article very informative and interesting. My grandfather, who passed away about 10 years ago, had Alzheimer's disease and it is good to know now that there are people working in this field to find a cure or help prevent this disease. With people working hard, there can be a cure or prevention for every disease.